Did they ever explain the logo thing? https://longform.asmartbear.com/logo/
Probably both design teams ripped off the same stock artwork for a bear by tracing it.
Also if you take asmartbear at his word, that sort of implies he at least somewhat believes his designer :) If he didn't think his designer had any scruples about saying that they made that, I don't think he'd have said it so plainly, as "was made by a freelance designer"
It's just a traced vector of a bear. Again, as someone who is familiar with this process, if we were just going to steal something, we would have put a bit of effort into not looking stolen.
Even an amazing designer can't make a silhouette of a bear from memory and he probably didn't take the photo himself. So he surely stole from something else too.