A kerfuffle between the Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC) and an anti-drilling group over copyright infringement has resulted in the latter removing from its website a logo similar to the one used by the MSC.

MSC spokesman Patrick Creighton told NGI’s Shale Daily that attorneys for the organization notified the internet service provider (ISP) that hosts the Shale Gas Outrage 2012 website — a creation of the anti-drilling group Protecting Our Waters (POW) — of the alleged copyright infringement.

“America is a country of laws,” Creighton said Friday. “If you look at the two logos, they copied the MSC’s logo. In our attorneys’ opinion, that was a direct infringement on [intellectual property] law. It would be no different than someone using Nike or McDonald’s logo.

“We simply asked them not use the logo anymore. We didn’t ask them to take down their website, as they claim.”

POW Executive Director Iris Marie Bloom confirmed that her organization did receive a notice from its ISP about the alleged copyright infringement. The website is now displaying a black “censored” box over the original logo.

“This was an outright attack on our website by the [MSC],” Bloom told NGI’s Shale Daily on Friday. “We had to just scramble, it was out of the blue.”