It’s a simple business transaction. They want you to make a logo for them, they pay you, it’s 100% theirs. Unless otherwise specified they own everything, the rights, licensing, trademark, copyright. You don’t. Especially if it’s a trademark. You actually can’t even put it on your website as a case study without their permission.
If they want to paint it pink, they can do whatever they want to it, there is no accounting for style. On the other side, if they want to put mickey mouse ears on it, you can’t be held responsible, it’s all theirs including the copyright infringement responsibility.
I understand most designers consider their work art, and have personal attachment to it, but it’s just a job. They get their design, you get to pay rent, now go work on your next project.
If you are a designer in a contractual/salaried position with a firm, then yes…you as the designer own nothing.
If you have a one on one contract as a designer with a client to do design work directly with them, then you retain the rights to the original artwork and design. The client owns the final approved version without changes.
You can disagree with this principal, but it is a matter of law.
It is a contract. They are paying for you to make them a thing. They aren’t paying you to make yourself something and let them use it. There isn’t anything special that separates the business relationship of a freelancer and an employee.
Quid pro quo.
It is a contract if both sides agree to it and there is a consideration on both sides (IANAL but I’ve had my father drum this into me.)
The problem arises if the contract is ambiguous and each side has a different understanding of what parts of it mean.
It makes no difference if the contract is drawn up by lawyers (who are merely advisers remember) or whether it’s done by Joe and Fred on a napkin on a table in the bar. Lawyers only get involved if there are disagreements. And contracts drawn up by £250/hour commercial lawyers can be just as flawed as Joe&Fred contracts because often the nature of the business isn’t fully understood by the lawyer.
I was once involved in negotiations in Italy. No lawyers present. We decided what we wanted to do, and wrote a contract in English and Italian that basically said:
We will make X and sell them to you for Y, up to Z units a year. You will sell as close to Z as you can.
Then the father of the son who was now running the business came in, he had the decision reported to him, asked a couple of questions, we did a big Mafia style handshake and that was it, we went out for a big lunch.
Sounds like it really comes down to who “ownership” transfers to in the contract:
This makes sense to me, and jives with some recent cases involving inventions or other creations made by employees or contractors who had exclusive work-product clauses in their contracts - companies have successfully argued that anything you create while employed - even on your own time! - belongs to them.
For contractors it’s a little more iffy, because the contracts tend to differ, and the contracts are also usually not exclusive. But most mention all “work-product” specifically created during hours billed to a client (or on their premedis or equipment, if applicable), belongs to the client.
Copyright applies, but contracts can (and often do) specify that all copyrights on creations and work product surrounding them are assigned to the client.
(I think about this stuff a lot as I have been an independent contractor for well over a decade, and never exclusively, and I’ve often had to adjust these parts of contracts as a result to avoid inadvertently giving ownership of work done for other clients to another).
Exactly this. More than anything, contracts spell out ownership of the final product, and are there to protect the client as much as the contractor, because with no contract in place, US copyright law says that the original artist retains the rights to the piece.
But, along with legally enforcing a contract, that’s something only theoretical for most independent contractors, because retaining a $250/hr copyright lawyer to sue a client who made your logo purple doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for someone who likely got paid about $200 for the logo design in the first place.
Same for me. I write some custom software for someone. They pay me. Now it’s theirs. They might hire me in the future to alter it down the line, they might hire someone else or alter it themselves.
The attitude above is the same bullshit Apple does saying you can’t alter or repair the hardware you bought and paid for.
It’s exactly because of loosely knit agreements like these that long, drawn out contracts exist! It’s what’s not said that’ll land the parties in court!! Yeah, contracts suck. But you know what sucks more? Misunderstandings, disagreements, arguments, disputes, and legal action later. Oh, and paying lawyers. That also sucks…big time.
I usually think of the Asshole Tax as the bonus $$$ I add on to the bill when dealing with an asshole, not the experience of being financially exploited.
I hear that. I guess for me it extends beyond the business world into some grand existential concept of what became of what you did over a lifetime. Same concepts, different scales and contexts.
It’s… a lot more complicated than that. Maybe not for logos, which people generally understand they are buying/selling the full rights to, but other creative production like illustrations are generally sold with rights limited to a certain period of publication (after which the rights revert to the artist), areas of publication (i.e. print only, web only, domestic vs. international), or usage (to accompany a print or digital article vs. being used as a CD cover vs. being sold on t-shirts/merch), or rate of reproduction (5,000 t-shirts versus 5,000,000, and will there be royalties?). Casual clients are unaware of this, so you need to spell out what rights they will have for what amount of money. Not every job needs that level of rights minutiae (and most that do are handled by agencies… freelancers facing that kind of negotiation should be consulting lawyers), but clear contract language protects the creator and helps the client understand the value of what they’re buying.
Naw, unless otherwise specified the artist retains the rights. I’m not saying that as a “should” statement it’s just… literally what happens.
I’m an illustrator and often do freelance illustrations for private clients meaning just regular folks and I explicitly tell them that I am retaining the copyright to the work they are paying me to do. Them paying me to do it means the painting exists now where it wouldn’t have before, and they get to give me directions during the process, and then they can get a print of it and put it on their wall or make it their icon on twitter or something for their personal enjoyment. I retain the copyright so I make prints and sell them. This works out for both parties because it means they can get their vision realized for a price that’s more affordable, get to do with it pretty much all they intended to do with it, and I can offset how much less I made on it by using it in my portfolio and selling prints.
If you don’t like the idea of an artist being able to do that with a work you paid them to create, make clear at the outset you want all the rights exclusively to yourself - the simplest way to do this is to tell the artist this is “work for hire” - if they know their copyright law they will know what this means and charge you accordingly.
Different jobs require different rights and often a person who wants something made will only ask to retain some of the rights non exclusively, or only retain exclusivity for a certain duration or under certain circumstances - this way the fee paid to the artist can be reduced in exchange for allowing the artist to also monetize the work either now or later on. Certainly some things require having all rights forever (logos are a good example) but if someone wants me to do work for hire to draw a butterfly for their mom… prooobably overkill
Wow. Obviously a ploy. It’s remarkable how designers don’t get that good transactional attorneys design relationships so that those rough edges, and poor habits don’t cause fatal misteps. Frankly I would think you guys would be all over that. Not being a jerk does get you places, they just happen to be bad places when you choose not to listen to the advice of competent counsel aka the person who sees the bad things happen to people they like who can’t take a hint and who succeeds when you do. The thing that you don’t realize is that the powerful need attorneys less than you bc a certain amount of you capulate when money is presented. The rest if you desperately need an attorney but have no clue because of your biases and inexperience. You might want to note that generally if you have merit you can win cases even against huge companies if you have the right contract and attorney. Moreover you can enforce social change and your liberties at a fraction if the cost of trying to do it yourself. Just saying it seems you might want not be jerks to those people who sacrifice their time and effort to make sure you live happy lives.
Wouldn’t that depend on what the contract says? If it specifies that the rights to the work are transferred to the client; then they are paying you to make them a thing. If it specifies that the client has a license to use the work; then, yes, they are paying you to make yourself something and let them use it.
Either arrangement(and numerous other variations) would be possible; and I don’t doubt that outright ownership of the product is a relatively common arrangement; but copyright licenses of various degrees of permissiveness and exclusivity are a very, very, common sort of contract.
About the only general observation you can draw from “it’s a contract” is “hopefully it adheres to the standards of contract law for the relevant jurisdiction”.
My point is that people who aren’t jerks need protection from jerks and
that’s where having more direct conversations about relationships (aka a
well written legal contract) comes in so that nonjerks can stay nonjerky.
