The organising committee of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics have withdrawn their recently-designed logos, with considerable loss and embarrassment, after Belgian designer Olivier Debie claimed they were close copies of a logo he had designed for a Belgian theatre, and threatened legal action for plagiarism.

The committee originally contested the allegation, noting that the theatre logo was not trademarked and in any case stating their conviction that their version was an original design. Their designer, Kanjiro Sano also denied plagiarism.

According to academic sources the accessing of the internet to copy the work of others is now endemic among students at universities around the world.