Brittany
It took months to come up with a unique business logo and you finally settled on something that represents everything about your brand. It’s a work of art – and you’re proud of it – but something recently drew your attention. Perhaps it was an anonymous email or maybe you found it organically, but you’ve become aware of another company or individual using your business logo.
A coincidence? Maybe – if you used a stock logo generator online.
In cases where you either designed it in-house or brought in a graphic designer to craft it from scratch, then the chances are the other party has seen your logo and tried to steal it. What can you do in a situation like this? Legal action will be required, so here’s what you need to do:
Know Your Legal Rights
First of all, business logos are usually automatically protected by copyright and trademark laws. Therefore you can take legal action as either a copyright or trademark infringement – depending on what the other party has done.
- If you can prove that a logo is very similar to yours – to the point that it may confuse the public – then it’s likely to be a trademark infringement
- If you can prove that someone has copied a substantial part of your creative work, then it will fall under copyright infringement
In either situation, you have the legal grounds to go after that business or individual, and there’s very little they can do about it, provided you also do the following steps.
Prove You Own The Logo
Logo disputes become complex when the other party claims they made the logo themselves without knowing about yours. They can even flip it around and make it seem like you stole the logo idea from them.
Get your business in the best position possible with litigation support software that uses eDiscovery to search through your data records. This is the best way to find evidence of design drafts and everything else that proves you designed the logo from scratch. Your research could show design ideas dating back to a year or so ago, while the other party can’t provide anything to argue against that. It puts you in a very commanding position to force them to alter their logo.
Prove Your Logo Design Was Stolen
Work with a legal team and use the right software to gather evidence that proves the other party took your ideas and stole them. You could uncover some crazy stuff here – like an employee sharing the logo details with the other party, in exchange for money. It’s a serious breach of privacy, and you have the right to terminate that employee.
Regardless, you need to create a case that clearly establishes you came up with the logo design and your business has the original. You won’t always find clear-cut evidence of theft, but there should be enough to show that you started the logo design before them.
At the end of the day, you worked hard to design a unique business logo instead of using a random AI generator. It makes it all the more painful when someone sees your brilliance and copies it for their business. Now you know what steps to follow in an incident like this, allowing you to take the right legal action and get the justice you deserve!
