By Jean Perwin

Design-related legal, copyright, trademark, or intellectual property rights confusion? NoD guest author and legal expert Jean S. Perwin is taking questions. If you have questions for Jean, email them to us using editor (at) notesondesign.net. Jean will reply to questions frequently here under the “Intellectual Property” category of NoD.

Sherri says:

Hi Jean,

I live in TN and in 2004 created my own freelance graphic design company. I did research on the name that I chose and found nothing similar. This weekend, I started checking around and now found one lady who has named her “craft” company/blog Blue Cricket Designs and another graphic design website. Should I as a sole proprietor invest in the $325 trademark filing fee? Most of my work is located in the state of TN, but it irritates me because of all the work that I put into my name. The irritation was especially apparent when the craft blog lady refused to stop using the name. She creates cards and other things that could become confused with what i do. Any advice would be helpful.

Thanks from a frustrated freelancer!

Sherri G Pugh Read the rest of this entry »

You asked your legal, copyright, and trademark questions, and Jean has answered! All questions are culled from the comments section attached to the original ‘Ask Jean’ post. We invite you to ask more questions

Kris says:

Hi,
I have a small company and I hired a freelance graphic designer to create logo, artwork and other items for my company. I paid her fully for the work she has done. There was no written contract. I have now hired a full time graphic designer and I have asked the freelance graphic designer to give me the original artwork so that I can have the in house graphic designer use it. She refused to turn over the original files (7 years worth of work for which she was paid very well). A few days later she called me and said she would turn over the files for a fee (substantial I might add). I told her that the logo’s belonged to my company and she was already paid for her work. Do I have any legal rights to obtain these from her?
Thanks,
Kris

Read the rest of this entry »

You asked your legal, copyright, and trademark questions, and Jean has answered! All questions are culled from the comments section attached to the original ‘Ask Jean’ post. We invite you to ask more questions.

Kelly says:

Hi Jean,
I asked a question awhile back that didn’t get answered – I’m wondering what to do in situations where an author wants to maintain copyright, but needs to remain anonymous. I am working on a blog and book that are being done under a pseudonym, and I don’t know how to go about protecting the material while not publishing my legal name.
Kelly Read the rest of this entry »

You asked your legal, copyright, and trademark questions, and Jean has answered! All questions are culled from the comments section attached to the original ‘Ask Jean’ post. We invite you to ask more questions.

Jean,

We own the trademark for a fashion label in the work form and stylized form. We have been trading as this trademark for over 30 years. However recently another company released a new fashion brand with the same name except they changed one of the letters from an n to a l (the fourth letter). Read the rest of this entry »

You asked your legal, copyright, and trademark questions, and Jean has answered! All questions are culled from the comments section attached to the original ‘Ask Jean’ post. We invite you to ask more questions.

Dear Jean,

Hope all is well with you. I am in the music entertainment business and recently one of the companies I do business is selling out to another music company. I licensed many songs to them as well as they administrate my publishing. I was not contacted about them selling out to the other company, which I think they should have done as a sign of courtesy. I called to speak with them, put keep getting the run around (not in office, sick, in a meeting, on holiday……).What are some of the questions you think I can ask them concerning them selling out and transferring all my catalogue and publishing to the other company (my publishing contract would expire in 2010). What are my rights and what might I be entitled to from the company? Hope you can answer my questions. Thanks in advance.

Cathy

Cathy:

It sounds like your best bet is to talk to the acquiring company to find out how they will handle the transfer of your agreements. Generally, in a merger or acquisition, the buying company takes over all the assets of the bought company including the licenses for your songs and your publishing agreement. They are legally bound by the same terms you had with your old company. The only way that may not be true is if your agreement with the old company did not allow them to assign the agreements. But, that’s very unlikely. To know what your rights are, you have to look at your agreements or have an attorney review them for you.

Jean

Most designers are pretty familiar with shopping for royalty free photos and illustrations for use in their designs. For anywhere from one dollar to hundreds, you can find just the image you need from various stock library sites.

Interactive designers often need more than images to get the message across. For many Flash pieces and videos, music or sound effects help convey the mood or indicate user input and movement through the piece. A quick search for royalty free music or sound effects will bring up loads of options (some of which are mighty cheesy), but I’ve come across a few interesting ones…

Read the rest of this entry »

You asked your legal, copyright, and trademark questions, and Jean has answered! All questions are culled from the comments section attached to the original ‘Ask Jean’ post. We invite you to ask more questions.

Dear Jean,

I occasionally do some freelance work, and I have some questions about typefaces and logos.

How much leeway do I have when using a typeface, such as Times or Arial from the Core Web Font set, in a logo? If I use one of those typefaces as a foundation but tweak the outlines, does that free me from liability? Was I even liable in the first place?

I’ve also been looking at fonts with a SIL Open Font License. These are often referred to as open-source fonts, but what if they’re used in a design? Can the resulting logo be trademarked or protected by a copyright? Does it make a difference if the logo contains only text, like the FedEx logo? What about if the logo also contains original artwork?

Thanks,
Kris

Dear Kris,

There are two questions here. The first is whether or not you can freely use typefaces in logos. The answer to that question is yes, and it’s true for both Core web fonts and fonts distributed under Open Font agreements. In fact, the creation of text or Read the rest of this entry »

You asked your legal, copyright, and trademark questions, and Jean has answered! All questions are culled from the comments section attached to the original ‘Ask Jean’ post. We invite you to ask more questions.

Dear Jean,

Help! I’m hoping to launch a new line of children’s and adolescent’s clothing later this year. We did our research and it seems our company’s trademark has not been registered by another organization. However, it was just discovered that a particular on-line store uses a name very similar to ours. Our company’s designs are completely original. The on-line store does not design it own goods. It seems to have a licensing agreement which allows them to sell children’s clothing that promotes various musical bands, so although our concepts are different, we do both cater to the same consumer age group.

My question is: if our trademarked names differ only by a few characters, could it be considered an infringement? To provide you with an example, let’s say their name is “Lil Tike” and our is “Lil’ Tikes.” I know that confusion seems likely, so we might consider changing our name to something like “Lil’ Tikez” or even “Little Tikes.” Would these changes sufficiently distinguish the two companies? We want to avoid legal problems.

Thanks so much!

Jeannie

Dear Jeannie,

If your trademark differs from another by only a few characters, it can be considered infringement, so adding a few letters or changing “lil” to “little” won’t solve the problem. For trademark purposes, the only thing that matters Read the rest of this entry »

You asked your legal, copyright, and trademark questions, and Jean has answered! All questions are culled from the comments section attached to the original ‘Ask Jean’ post. We invite you to ask more questions.

Hi Jean,

I am a graphic designer, and I recently designed some stationery, cards, and invitations based on royalty-free artwork. It has come to my attention that other designers are also using the same royalty-free artwork. Some of our pieces are similar, though none are exactly the same. What can I do to protect my work? I can forsee a scenario in which five designers all use the same royalty- free piece of artwork, place the graphic at the center and top of a card, and set the invitation text near the bottom. If you place them side-by-side, they would look the same, but no one really copied anyone else. What do we as designers do in such a situation? How do we protect ourselves and our work?

Jennie

Dear Jennie,

If substantially similar work is created independently, there is no infringement. This is true according to the concept of independent origination. In the situation you describe, you’re not at risk, Read the rest of this entry »

You asked your legal, copyright, and trademark questions, and Jean has answered! All questions are culled from the comments section attached to the original ‘Ask Jean’ post. We invite you to ask more questions.

Hello Jean,

I am a partner in a small market research company. We are currently developing a new website and that’s raised two legal questions: 1) Is it legal to use a client’s logo on our site if we’ve done business with them in the past? If permission is required, who grants that permission? 2) Can we legally put pictures taken inside a retail store on our site? There are no identifiable brands/labels in the photos, but it is obvious where the photo was taken.

Thanks!

Luke

Dear Luke,

You can always use a company’s trademark to identify that company. No permission is required. Just be careful about using someone else’s trademark to promote your own work. For example, Read the rest of this entry »