Logos

Logo artwork that identifies your goods or services can be legally protected. Copyright protects the artistic expression of the work, while trademark law would protect its use in the marketplace for the specific goods or services. If the name alone is generic or otherwise cannot qualify for trademark registration, consider registering the copyright for the original artwork.

If your logo is acting as a trademark to identify goods or services, you might consider registering it as a trademark in "stylized" form to protect the particular appearance of the mark such as design elements, color or special fonts. The design may also include words.

While trademark registration of a mark in standard characters (words, letters, numbers) will provide broad rights, namely use in any manner of presentation - registration of a logo or design does not require a claim to exclusive rights to the words in the logo (i.e. the literal elements of the logo) - but to the graphical presentation of the logo as a whole. See our section on trademark logos or words.

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