A lawyer representing Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has demanded that several of the campaign's logos be removed from Wikipedia, saying that reproducing the logos violate copyright law. The Wikimedia Foundation has complied with the DMCA takedown notice and removed the notices.

It's fairly surprising that the campaign would seek to ban wide distribution of its logos, which are clearly positive advertising for the campaign. It's even more surprising that after getting a call from the Wikimedia Foundation, the Sanders campaign didn't back down or blame an overzealous volunteer attorney—the campaign confirmed it wants Wikipedia to comply with the notice and not publish its logos.

"We also contacted the attorneys representing the Bernie Sanders campaign to discuss the issue, and they asked that WMF carry out a takedown in compliance with the DMCA rather than work with the community to update the licensing information or allow the images," wrote Wikimedia community manager James Alexander on a discussion page about the Sanders DMCA notices

Update 5:45pm: Alexander now says on the Wikimedia discussion page that the campaign has withdrawn the DMCA notice, but there's still no official word on the matter from either the campaign or the Wikimedia Foundation.

Observers have noted that it's debatable whether logos qualify for copyright protection at all. Even if they do, Wikipedia commentary about a political campaign seems like a crystal-clear example of fair use. Most of all, it's unclear why Sanders' lawyers think that removing their logos from a nonprofit site like Wikipedia would help the campaign.

Several logos were removed, including the "Feel The Bern" car magnet pictured above, which is sold for $10 at the berniesanders.com store. The takedown was publicized yesterday on Twitter by the Lumen Database (formerly Chilling Effects) and first noticed by Techdirt.

Tomasz Kozlowski, a Wikimedia volunteer administrator based in the UK, has filed a counter-notice (PDF) challenging the Sanders campaign takedown. "I have a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification," wrote Kozlowski. He also argued that the material "does not contain sufficient creative artistic or graphical authorship to support a copyright claim."

The Sanders campaign didn't respond to Ars' requests for comment on the DMCA takedown. An e-mailed request to the law firm performing the takedowns also went unanswered.

It isn't exactly clear how the Sanders campaign made the decision to get its materials off Wikipedia, but the decision clearly wasn't made by some overzealous, little-known volunteer. The attorney who authored the DMCA notice had his name redacted by Wikimedia, but the firm responsible is Seattle-based Garvey Schubert Barer. That's the same firm that handled Sanders' high-profile but short-lived lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee.