Upon reading from page 1 on this thread, I saw that both parties have a fault. The participants and the organizer of this contest were at the same fault.
Firstly, the organizer's fault was stated yahoo above and that was right.
The company should have done a better job in the selection process as well. They need to research all submissions to try and detect similarities in other brands and logos. Just my 2 cents.
If they want a professional logo maker, probably I think they hired someone than having a contest. For a good product result, not just a copied by someone else work or be stated that using software template isn't allowed.
For the participants, whether it is a contest or not. If you are professional logo makers, make your own design. If you will use others work as a reference make it sure at least don't have similarities that obviously easily identify or much better made by your own.
Now for tagging, their explanations are appropriate even though it seems a sort of copy pasting because of free template used, they're excused for this. Since there is no rules from the organizer of the contest that prohibit, I think there's no offense, unless if the rule was clearly stated there.