Many people desire to start their businesses. To be able to do what you love and be compensated for seems like the perfect life. What more could one ask for?
Once you’ve chosen your product and established a company with a catchy name, it’s time to choose a brand logo for it.
Since there are so many businesses, a logo is the only thing that will set yours apart and make it easier for people to discover you. After all, the second most unique aspect of your company, after your product, is its logo.
We will talk about copyright in this article, emphasizing how to copyright a logo.
1. What Is Copyright?
The owner’s legal rights over property are referred to as “copyright.“ Copyright law ensures that the owner’s property is protected and no one else can duplicate it without the owner’s consent.
A copyright protects an original piece. This implies that a work must be original and not a duplicate of another work and must be recorded in some kind, such as a written document, a video or sound recording, or an image.
The following activities are covered by copyright: distributing the work, reproducing the work, and displaying or performing the work.
2. Why Is Copyright Important?
It is only fair that those who put in the time and resources to create something get recognized and rewarded for their efforts. Copyright protection is used to guarantee that this happens. That is why everyone should know how to copyright a logo.
2.1. Keeps Your Work Safe
Copyright is crucial because it gives the creator the power to prevent unauthorized use of their work, preserving its worth. This stops their work from being plagiarized or misused by others.
2.2. Encourages Artists and Art
Artists are encouraged to create work confidently without worrying about having their work stolen. Also, it is ensured that they are given credit for their efforts.
2.3. Financial Benefit
Any income derived from the original work should be your full and exclusive property. This is certain, and you get paid fairly for your work thanks to copyright protection.
3. Why Copyright a Logo?
Every business, large or small, should know how to copyright a logo and should copyright it. One can lose their company’s sense of identity if another company can use a similar version of your logo or closely replicate it if the logo is not copyrighted.
Logos are created to make the brand recognizable. The company’s logo is an element of its brand and is linked to it forever. The company’s reputation can be harmed by any abuse of the company logo by any other organization or product. The logo must be copyrighted to avoid this.
Knowing how to copyright a logo helps gain exclusivity, which prevents others from using it without your consent.
It also ensures that no one else uses your brand to promote their business, preventing misunderstandings among clients.
4. What Is Protected by Copyright?
You can secure copyrights to prevent someone from directly copying your original artistic creations. Using copyrights prevents anyone from using your artwork for their purposes. One should know how to copyright a logo if it is an original piece of art to which you own the rights.
In addition to a logo, copyrights safeguard a piece of writing, a song, a picture, a website, or a work of art.
5. Owner of a Copyright
The original owner of the copyright is often the person who created the work. There are a few exclusions.
- When an employee produces work while employed, the employer is the rightful owner of the copyright.
- If the creator sold the full copyright, the company or person making the purchase would be the copyright owner.
- The commissioning person retains the copyright if an independent contractor produces the work and states in a formal agreement that the work is “made for hire.”
6. What Is a Trademark?
A trademark refers to any term, phrase, symbol, or design a person or corporation uses to identify or distinguish their products and set them apart from those in the same industry.
A trademark acknowledges the company’s ownership of the brand and solely marks the product as being its own.
It aids buyers in distinguishing between brands and recognizing the goods.
7. Importance of Trademark Protection
Maintaining a brand’s safety and protection is essential. Trademarks can help with this.
7.1. Protects Brand Identity
A trademark protects your brand identity and allows you to prevent someone from benefiting from your brand or misusing it.
7.2. Creates a Unique Identity
A trademark differentiates goods or services from others in the market. It sets the brand apart from the competition and gives it a distinctive business identity.
7.3. Easy to Find
The product is easy to identify among others in the market for buyers thanks to a registered trademark.
7.4. Shows Authority
Trademark protection certifies ownership of the brand. The trademark tells the world you have an exclusive right to the brand and its products.
7.5. Growing Worth
A business’s registered trademark may prove to be a major asset. The value of your trademark increases with your business growth.
8. Why Trademark a Logo?
Trademarking a logo is essential; one should know how to copyright a logo and trademark it. Registering your logo with trademark protection has several benefits.
8.1. Gain Competitive Edge with Trademark
Maintaining an edge over the competition is easier by using a trademarked name and logo for your corporation or service. This happens as you have a logo registered with trademark protection that sets your brand apart from others.
8.2. Overseas Registration
You can register your brand in other nations once your logo has been protected with a trademark. This enables you to expand your market and sell your goods abroad.
8.3. Gives Control Over the Logo
There is probably little you can do to prevent someone else from using a similar or even exact logo if it is not trademarked. The value of your brand may be diminished by someone else using your logo. It can be avoided if your logo is trademark-protected, preventing others from using it.
8.4. Complaint Can Be Filed
You have the right to sue anyone using your logo without your consent if it has been registered with trademark protection. Furthermore, having a trademark allows you to receive compensation for any damages.
8.5. Build Client Loyalty
Trademark names and logos of businesses have an impact on customers. A trademark helps to boost consumer confidence in your brand and promote expansion.
9. What Is Protected by Trademark?
A trademark identifies your brand and helps customers differentiate products in the marketplace.
A word, phrase, symbol, or design is frequently used as a trademark. By applying to register your trademark and logo, you can safeguard it and stop others from using it.
Your trademark sets your brand and products apart from those of your rivals. When customers recognize your trademark and desire to repurchase your product, you build consumer trust and loyalty.
The following assets can have trademark protection: company names, logos, taglines, and slogans.
10. Owner of a Trademark
A trademark owner might be a person, partnership, company, limited liability company, sole proprietorship, trust, or estate.
The trademark owner is the entity in charge of determining the kind and caliber of the products and services associated with the trademark.
11. Difference Between Trademark Registration and Copyright Registration
- What each protects is the primary distinction between copyright and trademark. In contrast to trademark protection, which covers trade & brand names, taglines, and logos, copyright safeguards literary and artistic works.
- The trademark forbids rivals from marking their products using words or similar symbols. A copyrighted work cannot be reproduced or sold by anybody other than the creator.
- A trademark provides a way to keep exclusivity while exclusive rights to use and distribute an original work are granted under copyrights.
- A trademark conveys a sense of belonging to the goods or services in clients’ minds. In contrast, copyright respects the work’s originality.
12. What Is a Logo?
A logo refers to a picture or emblem that reflects the brand and helps promote and differentiate between different brands and companies. Knowing how to copyright a logo is important because it represents the brand, and copyright protects it. A nicely made logo helps to develop a personal bond with your target audience by effectively communicating your brand voice.
Many factors make a logo important, like assisting in developing the brand identity, creating a positive initial impression with customers, giving your business an emblem for people to recognize you easily, encouraging customers to engage with your brand, and fostering loyalty with customers.
13. Tips for Creating a Logo
The logo you use represents your brand. It communicates with the client about your company. Therefore, knowing how to copyright a logo is important. But before, one must ensure it is flawless.
There are a few considerations when creating the ideal logo for your company.
- The logo is an image representation of your company. As a result, the first thing to do is evaluate the company’s objectives. You should do a ton of research about the company’s objectives before creating a logo.
- Verify whether the logo is original. Considerable research is needed for this. The research ought to look for industry-related logos and phrases, and designs on design and portfolio websites.
- You may obtain results from the web and find logos in the context of already-existing businesses. Therefore, filtering out all existing trademark registrations and logos is simple to avoid using them.
These details should be considered when designing.
- For the best effect, choose a solid color backdrop and try to separate your symbol from the typography.
- Try colorful and grayscale variants of the logo.
- When using wordmarks, separate the most distinctive or particular initials.
- Create a timeless logo.
14. Logo and Brand Identity
Logos and brand identities go hand in hand. Your logo, among other things, is part of your brand identity. It is a crucial element in mind as it is unique, attracts attention, distinguishes your brand from competitors, creates a lasting impression, forms the core of your brand identity, and encourages brand loyalty.
Since a logo is such a crucial element for the brand’s existence, knowing how to copyright a logo is important.
15. The Best Ways to Stop Logo Theft
Logo theft is very common, given the number of businesses out there. That is why one must know how to copyright a logo to protect it. Some strategies for preventing logo theft are:
- Register the logo’s trademark and copyright.
- Make good use of your trademark and copyright to prevent diluting it.
- Trademark and copyright protection should be used so that consumers can quickly start associating your services with the brand and forming a connection between them.
- Always watch for breaches and take appropriate steps to stop them. This will also assist in the prevention of any confusion about your brand with others in the market.
16. How to Copyright a Logo?
16.1. Know What Can Be Copyrighted
The first step is to determine what can be protected by copyright. Since copyright is an important asset, one should know how to copyright a logo. Artworks can be protected by copyright registration. Common symbols and patterns, however, are not protected by copyright. You’ll need to create a distinctive logo because popular symbols and designs aren’t eligible to be copyrighted. If your design isn’t entirely original, you might need to register your copyright with other types of protection, like a trademark.
Confirming that you genuinely own your business logo if someone else designed your logo for you is crucial. Make sure they give you the rights to that logo to avoid any issues with the trademark registration and problems in the future.
16.2. Copyright Registration
After you’ve made your logo, you may proceed to register your copyright. A copyright application can be submitted online at the copyright office’s website.
How to copyright a logo seems to be an issue with a very complex solution, but the method is rather easy. If any problems arise, an intellectual property lawyer can always be consulted. The benefit of hiring a trademark attorney is that it enables a more thorough examination of the databases for trademarks and logo designs.
Following are the steps to how to copyright a logo:
- Complete the online application or the paper form. Before registering your logo online, you must establish a user ID and password.
- Enter your name, contact information, and a high-resolution version of your logo, among other bits of personal information.
- As part of your application, you must send copies of the logo artwork to the copyright office. You can mostly do this online. However, you might need to ship copies to the copyright office instead. Just make sure to mention your online filing.
- Send in the filing fee. Credit cards, debit cards, and internet banking are all acceptable forms of payment for the registration fee. The cost schedule is subject to frequent modification; for the most recent charge, see the Copyright page.
- The copyright office immediately sends an email confirming receipt of the application after it has been filed online. If the papers are sent via offline mail, that might not be the case.
- If the copyright examiners discover issues with your application, you will be contacted and given some time to respond and make the required changes.
16.3. Await a Response
Your application may take six months or longer to process. It may take up to 13 months for the government to process your request if you complete and send your paperwork by mail. It takes around two months less time to handle online submissions.
If you submitted your application online, you could use the electronic copyright office portal and your application number to check on its status from time to time.
17. Copyright Application Process
The following copyright application process is pretty straightforward.
- The application is assessed by the copyright assessor when completed and submitted. Any concerns detected during this examination can be reviewed at this stage.
- The examiner reviews and carefully examines the application to look for any inconsistencies in case no objections are presented.
- If no errors are found, and all the necessary documents and information are submitted with the application, the applicant is permitted to move on to the next phase.
- The applicant is informed if certain errors are discovered in the application. The applicant can proceed to the next stage after the issues are addressed.
- If someone objects to an application, letters are given to both parties. The registrar then summons them to a hearing.
- If the objection is heard and dismissed, the application is reviewed, and the application passes if found without any errors. If errors are found, they are addressed.
- A rejection letter is provided to the applicant if the objection is not clarified or the issue is not resolved.
This marks the conclusion of the applicant’s copyright registration process.
18. What to Do After Obtaining a Logo’s Copyright?
Once you have figured out how to copyright a logo and have registered your logo for copyright protection, you should add the copyright symbol to your logo. After obtaining copyright, logos may display the copyright symbol, the letter C, enclosed in a circle.
One can also include the information and date of the logo’s origin. This offers some heritage and openness to their brand identity.
19. Do Trademarks Outweigh Copyright Protection?
Copyrighting is the first thing that comes to mind when one creates anything. After all, no one wants their work stolen. To begin receiving protection, all you have to do is register your ownership of the copyright. However, there are a few copyright concerns to take into account.
For instance, a work must correspond to a fairly strict degree of uniqueness to be protected by copyright. If your logo lacks originality, you might not get copyright protection and could fail to protect your brand identity.
On the positive side, even if you cannot obtain a copyright for your logo, you may still be able to get a trademark to safeguard your business’s values.
Still, it is advised to keep on being creative. Once a logo demonstrates creativity, it will be eligible for trademark and copyright protection. In light of this, companies should know how to copyright a logo and trademark it.
In comparison to a copyright, a trademark is more particular. It is intended to safeguard everything connected to a company’s brand. Copyrights are sometimes considerably harder to protect than trademarks.
It is important to keep in mind that resolving trademark disputes may be a highly time-consuming and expensive procedure.
20. Is It Possible to Trademark Your Logo for Free?
Trademark registration is not a free service. What you can do, though, is create a “common law trademark” without paying anything. You may do so by simply opening a business. The advantage of common law trademark rights is that they are free and don’t need any special labor, like filling out paperwork or paying fees.
21. Is It Better to Trademark or Copyright My Logo?
Copyrighting deals with artistic works. Trademarking is used to protect assets that serve to depict an image of the business.
You should submit a trademark application if you use your logo with your company and sell products or services that feature the logo. On the contrary, if your logo is distinctive, you should go for copyright protection to protect your logo’s creative and unique aspects.
Trademarks and copyright have advantages, so getting dual protection with both copyright and trademark is advised to be secure. One should know how to copyright a logo and further trademark it. It’s also advisable to speak with a legal team to avoid mistakes.
Conclusion
Your brand’s logo is critical to your brand image and should be protected. You could have additional protection if you submit a copyright application for your logo with a trademark registration on your own.
Copyright and trademarks each have their benefits. A copyright application does not provide certain rights that trademark registration does and vice versa. Copyright protection provides different legal advantages than trademark registration does. They are complementary to one another. That is why one should know how to copyright and trademark a logo to protect work.
After using professional legal assistance, the best course of action for protecting your logo should be decided upon so that you may build and protect your business without any concerns.
