The International Olympic Committee and Tokyo organizers of the 2020 Games jointly confirmed in a statement Monday that Belgian designer Olivier Debie has dropped his plagiarism lawsuit filed in August over an Olympics logo by Kenjiro Sano.
Debie had claimed the T-shaped logo unveiled by Tokyo last summer copied key elements of his 2011 design for Belgium's Theatre de Liege. Japanese designer Sano denied plagiarism, though the logo was withdrawn by Tokyo Olympics organizers in September amid plagiarism allegations against earlier work by Sano and his team.
Debie and the theater had jointly filed the lawsuit in Belgium against the International Olympic Committee.
After coming to an agreement with the IOC, the theater pulled out of the suit in October. Debie said in January that he would not proceed with a defense hearing originally scheduled to take place on Tuesday.
The statement from the IOC and Tokyo 2020 organizers said that the two committees "maintain their position that there was no copyright nor moral rights infringement and the IOC was looking forward to having the Court render a decision on this case."
Tokyo launched a competition in October for a new Olympics logo and has entered the final stage of the selection process.