logo story

So, here I was strolling on the web, going through my temp (look at it later) bookmarks.. I got to this blog's page about some 1971 PanAm posters - which are pretty minimally cool. The author mentions the origin of these images as being courtesy of Milton Glaser Design Study Center and Archives. I had, of course, to click this link cause by now I wanted more eye candy. This is where the plot thickens: right there in the first gallery - the one for Chermayeff & Geismar - i see this corporate graphic design for what I think is "redtooth". At this point I'm confused. The caption mentions I company called Beaunit. I then founf out that Beanit is a defunct textile corporation. This gets even weirder when I google bluetooth beaunit logo and I only get 3 pages of results and nothing rather satisfying. Next I went to bluetooth's wikipedia page and also, no sign of a Beaunit mention. But there are two paragraphs telling it's story:

The word Bluetooth is an anglicised version of the Scandinavian Blåtand/Blåtann, the epithet of the tenth-century king Harald I of Denmark and parts of Norway who united dissonant Danish tribes into a single kingdom. The implication is that Bluetooth does the same with communications protocols, uniting them into one universal standard.

The Bluetooth logo is a bind rune merging the Younger Futhark runes  (Hagall) and  (Bjarkan), Harald's initials.

The question, then, remains. Is this a case of design separated at birth, "a knockoff, a buyout, or some designer just phoning it in and reusing something from a company that went out of business."

see also Skyekat for at different story on the same topic.