Logo design copyright query

B

boristhespie

New Member
A couple of years back I designed a logo for a company. I was employed by my own company and was just starting out. As you can imagine I knew very little. Anyway desperate for work, when the company was approached by local company to create logo we agreed. I designed logo and it was invoiced simply as "design of logo" for which the company was paid £150.

There was no talk of transfer of copyright and no documents were signed re this. No contract beyond "could you design us a logo" and a "yes" was made. These were an adjacent company of aquaintences. It was all rather casual.

Thing is, now the logo is beginning to pop up everywhere and more importantly to me, they have begun to muck around with it and change it, which I resent. They trademarked their name and I am trying to see if this includes the logo.

The company which this was done through and which I owned was dissolved by myself.

Do I have any comeback re this. Have I any rights remaining over the design the main elements of which are unchanged? Or did I give over rights when I invoiced the £150 for "design of logo"

Can I stop their manipulation of the logo.
 
Without a contract or a written agreement in place, it's a bit sketchy with regards to what they can and can't do with the logo once they have it. This might just be one of those jobs where it's best to just let it go and learn from it.
 
Even in my contract I have that once a client has paid for all their work, respective files are transferred and things, the files are then there's to do entirely what they want with. You can't really force people to come back for every single change they want made.

I guess with this, just cut your losses.
 
Once paid for, usage of the design is theirs. They don't own the copyright so they cannot legally resell the logo or claim the design to be their own. When they paid you, they paid for usage of the image, not the rights to distribution. However, if they are hacking it to bits for their own use, that's going to hurt them more than you and all you can do is move on. A contract is just going to prove to both parties what was agreed upon and may or may not stand up in court anyhow. Besides, even if you did have an ironclad contract, the legal fees are likely to outweigh any settlement.
You could write to the client telling them what you've seen and ask if they needed further assistance. Perhaps they thought they were saving money but it took them longer than they thought. Just a thought.
 
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