If you are having a logo or website designed then you may want to find out where you stand in terms of who owns the copyright to it. Copyright protects your design so that others cannot copy it and use it as their own. You do not have to pay or register to copyright a logo or design, this is granted automatically. There are many companies that will offer a service where you can copyright a logo for example, but they will charge a fee for this. This is not necessary and is pretty much meaningless.

You automatically acquire the copyright rights to an image, illustration, piece of music, artwork, web content, logos etc. when you have created it from scratch yourself. i.e you cannot simply amend someone else’s logo and then claim it to be your own work.

Most designers will state that once money has been paid to them for a logo/ website design the copyright then lies with the client and not themselves, but it is vital to clarify this in writing before going ahead with any design work.