How To Copyright & Trademark A Logo

Aug 19, 2022 | Copyright, Corporations

Written by Lawyer Monthly

Coming up with a logo is an involved process requiring various steps to complete. This is because a brand’s symbol must represent the company’s values, its philosophy and vision, and the niche it operates in. But imagine working hard on developing the logo, hiring designers, and even consulting semioticians to observe later that your brand’s DNA has been replicated. Not very pleasant, right? The feeling will be even worse if your logo hasn’t been protected, allowing others to copy the symbol you’ve worked diligently on without legal consequences. In this article, we’ll learn about copyright and trademark rights, define their advantages, and guide you through safeguarding your logo so that no one can steal it.

Copyright and trademark: What are they?

Copyright and trademark are terms people often confuse and use interchangeably, but the thing is, they differ and have different purposes.

Copyright protects a piece of germane work and labels it as your own. For example, if you create hand-made items and copyright them, your stuff will be protected by law

Trademark makes one company divergent from others in the market. In this case, vista create is a trademark that differs from other brands in the industry

These are very brief and straightforward meanings of copyright and trademark. The fields they extend to and touch upon are subject to change and can vary by location and multiple other elements.

Advantages of trademark and copyright registration

Both legal elements have unique features, and you can also register one without another. However, we encourage you to complete two registration procedures for a better effect (see below to learn more). Here, in turn, is the list of most substantial advantages your company and symbol will get upon registering the mentioned rights:

-Secure protection against similar logos
-Allow for resolving matters in the legal field with reimbursement
-Help increase recognition
-Get assistance from the International Trade Commission
-Prevent copycatting
-Steps to copyright a logo

Whether you wish to copyright or trademark your logo first is not essential. More importantly, ensure to complete both procedures and secure your symbol. Regarding the former, the following is a step-by-step guide to copyrighting a logo.

Register: The first thing you should do to copyright a logo is to register your request. In the US, this can be completed by filling out a special form on the United States Copyright Office web page. While you can also do it in paper form, keep in mind that opting for online registration will save you much more time (online – 8 months; offline – 13 months)

Fill out the request: Once the Office receives and reviews your request and sets the date, you need to visit the United States Copyright Office, get the eCO Form, and fill it out. You will also need to present the logo in the Office, so don’t forget to bring it

Provide the files and pay the fee: At last, you will need to submit your logo alongside the form and pay the fee. The cost may range, but it’s around $70

After you do that and pay the fee, wait on approval. Beware: You won’t deter unauthorized copying by copyrighting a logo to identify your brand (not a product). This brings us to another equally critical and legal component.

Steps to trademark a logo

Trademarking a logo is more labor-intensive because it requires several steps before completing an application. A trademark is a more delicate aspect that considers various logo elements like a color scheme. A slight resemblance with a symbol in the database may lead to an attorney refusing to grant you a trademark. Notwithstanding, here is what you need to do.

Ensure to research the existing marks: First and foremost, it’s crucial to check the trademark system to see whether or not anyone else uses the same silhouette. The Trademark Electronic Search System is the tool devised for such research. Even if you are a hundred per cent sure your logo is unique, it’s best to double-check the database.

File a request: After you complete the previous step, go to the Trademark Electronic Application System.

Choose the form and pay the fee: Be careful once in the system, as several options are available. You will need to choose the most relevant to your business. Learn which type, Regular, Reduced, or Plus is best suited for your business. The fee amount will vary depending on the form.

The trademark registration procedure can last for a while, with an expert concluding if your logo meets the requirements. To be up to date with the decision, visit the Trademark Status & Document Retrieval website to learn about the status.

I have copyrighted & trademarked the logo. What’s next?

There you go, now you can enforce your rights, congrats! However, remember that you must track whether no one infringes on your property individually. There are two methods to protect your logo: a cease and desist letter or a trademark infringement lawsuit. Qualified experts can monitor the market and deter attempts to use your brand symbol.

Bottom Line

Copyright and trademark are different but interrelated legal rights to protect your assets, including the logo. Should you contemplate registering one of them, we suggest catching two birds with one stone and completing both procedures. This way, you will rest assured that your intellectual property is under lock and key.

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Appropriation Art vs. Copyright Law: A Recent Setback for the Promotion of the Arts

Jun 9, 2022 | Copyright, Corporations

Written by Peter Fay, JD ’23

The Second and Ninth Circuits have consistently led the way  in establishing the scope of American copyright law. In the past few years, the Second Circuit in particular has had the difficult task of reconciling copyright law with appropriation art, an artistic style predicated on the intentional use of preexisting images and objects . The user alters the original works to create a new aesthetic experience and/or meaning. 

While a popular and respected form of art , appropriation art’s essence – the purposeful use of preexisting works – makes it especially susceptible to claims of copyright infringement. Outside of consent from the original work’s author, the best legal defense for appropriation art is the doctrine of fair use. However, as appropriation artists have experimented with increasingly minimalistic changes  to the works they appropriate, this doctrine has proven to be an unreliable shield. Appropriation artists looking to explore the substantial effects that subtle alterations can have on art find themselves at odds with the fair use doctrine’s mandate that unauthorized use of preexisting works be “transformative.” Finding the proper overlap between minimalistic alterations and transformativeness is difficult, but it is a codification that has considerable implications for future appropriation art. Unfortunately, the most recent Second Circuit decision on the matter suggests this overlap is small to nonexistent, impeding the promotion of appropriation art. 

Andy Warhol Found. for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith,  No. 19-2420-cv, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 25277 (2d Cir. Mar. 26, 2021) resulted from a dispute over a series of silkscreen prints made by Andy Warhol. The prints were based on a photograph taken and copyright protected by Lynn Goldsmith in 1981 of the famous musician Prince. While Goldsmith had licensed the Prince photograph to be used by Andy Warhol for a piece commissioned by Vanity Fair in 1984, the license ended there. Warhol, however, continued to make fifteen additional works based on Goldsmith’s photograph. These additional pieces would only come to Goldsmith’s attention after Prince’s death in 2016. As the successor to the rights of the Prince Series, the Andy Warhol Foundation moved for a declaratory judgment while Goldsmith sued for copyright infringement.

The district court concluded that the Prince Series was transformative and thus fair use, going through the 1976 Copyright Act’s four-step test  but relying primarily on the purported change of purpose in the piece: the aesthetic change from a black and white photograph to a colorful silkscreen print transformed Prince from a self-conscious musician to a proud world-renowned rockstar. 

The Second Circuit disagreed, arguing that the district court had forgone the proper objective assessment of purpose and character for a ”subjective evaluation of the underlying artist message.” Underlying the circuit court’s ruling is a concern that an evaluative standard would weaken copyright protection by allowing appropriators of preexisting works to throw out any feasible change in purpose as a fair use justification. The circuit court also stated that judges are ill-suited to engage in artistic evaluation. Ultimately the Second Circuit concluded that a proper transformation under fair use occurs when the secondary work displays more than the user’s artistic style imposed on the original author’s work.

While I understand the Second Circuit’s desire for a more consistent transformativeness standard, I am skeptical this ruling will create the clarity the court seeks. Art is an innately subjective form of human expression; the experience and reaction of one spectator to a given artwork will regularly be different from that of another spectator. The Second Circuit even admits as much, dismissing that the purpose of work can be pinpointed based on the intent of the author or the opinion of a critic. So why are we kidding ourselves that there is one objective assessment of art? Labeling an inquiry into something as subjective as the purpose and character of art does not suddenly ensure the inquiry is objective. 

The Second Circuit would have better served both doctrinal clarity and the promotion of the arts by leaving in place the transformativeness standard it expressed in its last major appropriation art case, Cariou v. Prince , 714 F.3d 694 (2d Cir. 2013). In that case, the Second Circuit asserted that the critical question of transformativeness is how the work “may reasonably be perceived.” This reasonable observer standard is subjective but restrained: it affords the understanding that there are multiple reasonable interpretations of art while also excluding abuse of fair use with fringe explanations. Had the Second Circuit stuck with this standard, Andy Warhol’s Prince Series and its palpable celebration of Prince as a larger-than-life figure would have been protected under fair use. 

The good news for appropriation artists is that the Andy  Warhol Foundation  case has been appealed to the Supreme Court , with the Warhol Foundation arguing that the Second Circuit’s judgment disregarded the Court’s decision in Google LLC v. Oracle Am. , Inc. , 141 S. Ct. 1183 (2021). For now, however, appropriation artists will likely need to think twice about the magnitude of alterations they are making to original works. 

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