Add Branding To Legal California Intellectual Property Forms For Free

Copyright law provides that the designer of the logo is the first owner, unless it's made by an employee in the course of their employment, in which case the copyright will be owned by the employer. If you employ a designer who creates your new logo, you will own the copyright in it.

Brand names and logos are IP assets (trademarks) worth protecting. Registering your trademark gives you 15 years of exclusive rights to use it, and you can renew it indefinitely, as long as you are still using the trademark.

Trademark and Logos Logos represent an overlapping area of intellectual property between a copyright and a trademark. Many businesses prevent their logo from use by others with both copyright and trademark protection.

A person or company should never use a trademark or logo without written permission from its owner. To get permission and avoid trademark infringement, write a letter to the trademark owner.

Originality may not be the explicit business goal of a new brand project, but brand builders should stretch teams to be different than anything else in the marketplace to help legally protect the brand. Just like names and taglines, the law recognizes a company's logo as its intellectual property.

To protect your trademark/service mark that is used in California, you must file a Trademark / Service Mark Application for Registration (Form TM-100) with the California Secretary of State. Duration of a registration of Trademark or Service Mark is five (5) years.