Do I Need an Agreement with My Logo Designer?

And the answer to that is yes.

Even if you got your logo done on Fiverr or any of those logo-design web-sites. You want to make sure that you have something to confirm that you own the image that you’re going to use as your logo. And that is very important. Just because you paid somebody to create something for you, to paint that image or design the logo. doesn’t mean that you own the copyright and other intellectual property in that image.

So what that means is that - yes, you paid for it. You have an implied license to use it. But that means that the ownership of that intellectual property still remains with a person who designed it. And they can sell it to your competitor, they can sell it to many of your competitors, or they can use it themselves the way they want to.

So, in order for you to get a monopoly on that image, you have to have it in writing. And by the way, your agreement should specifically say that they allow you to register that logo as your trademark.

I have published a template, a one-pager that helps you get a proper agreement with a designer who already did the work, you paid them, but you didn’t document it properly.

So it's a one-pager and if you go to nicecontracts.com It is the first agreement over there and it’s called After-the-Fact Copyright Assignment.

It is a fraction of what I charge to create a customized agreement, but that one I used myself in my own business many times. You just print it off, you explain, you fill out the parties’ names, you describe what content is being assigned over to you and there you go.

The other agreement on the same page is called Content Creation Agreement. It is something that you use in advance of somebody creating something for you. And that’s the better option, it’s a more sophisticated agreement that covers a lot more things. It is longer. And the idea behind it is very simple. You won’t convince somebody who already did the work for you to sign a long agreement. They’re just not going to do it. But it’s easy enough usually to get them to sign a one-pager.

With somebody who is just about to do something for you, before the money changes hands, you can get them to sign pretty much anything. So that’s the second agreement that you may want to use. It is called Content Creation Agreement.

Again, go to nicecontracts.com and get your contract over there. Because it is very important.

If you brand becomes a huge, massive value, you want to make sure that you have everything documented properly. And it is not enough for you to file the trademark application, because if your trademark application is based on an image that somebody else has rights to, technically, they can go after you and invalidate your trademark application or trademark registration.

So you have to be very careful!

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