Protecting Your Custom Company Logo Design's Copyright by Kat Delacruz

You would definitely not want to loose your business to someone else who has conveniently copied your logo to use as their own. Safeguarding your logo from plagiarism or trademark infringement is one of the most vital steps that you can take to protect your brand identity. People commonly confuse copyright protection and trademark protection as the same thing. Though both of these protect your brand identity, copyright protects the logo and trademark defends the logo, brand name or slogan as used in the marketplace.

This article would elaborate on protecting your customer company logo design's copyright. For protecting your logo you need to know about how to protect it?

According to US copyright office "Copyright protection may be available for logo artwork that contains sufficient authorship." This means that following type of logos cannot be protected by copyright laws:

Commonly used symbols or designs such as Latin cross, peace signs or arrows
Logos containing texts that only have mere variations in fonts, lettering, colors for example text in times new roman or text in a red.

The term "Sufficient authorship" means that the logo should have a certain degree of creativity and innovativeness attached to it. If your business is using a logo picked out from an online free to use source or MS word clipart directory, your logo would not be eligible for copyright protection.
Following are the steps that you must take to ensure the copyright protection for your logo:

Properly mark your work as copyrighted: To avoid any ignorant mistakes on the part of others mark your logo as copyrighted. This will forewarn people about consequences of deliberate copying.

Register your company's logo: Register your company's logo or any such artwork or promotional material that you want to protect against infringement with the country's copyright services. Registration can be made even before the launch of the company. This process is very simple and entails filling up few forms.

Backup your claim with sufficient evidence: The application for registration of copyrighting the company logo should be backed up evidences that talks about how the work for designing the logo progressed? Who was the author of the work? What is it in the logo that makes it unique?

In case of Joint ventures: If your company is a joint venture, agree in advance to who will inherit the logo if one partner leaves the company.

Plagiarism has become a very serious threat to the creativity , copyrighting your logo is a must from every angle to safeguard your brand identity. Delay in taking these steps can cost you all your efforts of establishing a brand identity.

Katt DelaCruz is a contributing writer and intern at [MN]interactive.com. [MN]interactive.com is a web design and creative design studio based out of Miami, Florida USA. If you need assistance with logo development or need web development [MN]interactive.com will exceed your expectations an assure you results.