A client is about to adopt a new corporate logo, and I did a trade mark search, which reveal an identical logo already registered by an unrelated company. It turned out that the logo was “designed” by a designer in their in-house design department in China. The client didn’t think too much of it, but only asked the designer to do another design, this time without direct copying someone else.
This is actually serious professional misconduct. The designer copying a design from someone else is dishonest. The fact that the design was about to be used as their corporate logo could have led the employer into serious legal consequences. The designer should have been fired.