Logo design, copyright ?

[Geraint]

I recently designed a logo for a company. They supplied two images of poor quality which I had to re-draw and vectorize. I also completely changed the colour and added their name to it - the images now look nothing like the originals supplied as they are merged into a logo with added text.

They told me they weren't happy with logo and refused to pay. A few months later they are using it on social media and their website.

Do I own the copyright as I re-drew the images and created a logo for them?

They say they had permission from the owners of the the images supplied ( the ones I had to re-draw)

Sorry if it's a biting winded, think I make sense. Please let me know if I own this logo and if I should demand they remove it from sites etc.

[Justin]

I would do that. It's been a while and I've only had very PRELIMINARY references to copyright law in my classes.

However, you might not even need to go into copyright law. This seems like a basic contract breach (please tell me you have some evidence of agreement). (But even if you don't, that's not fatal to your case). Consider these questions.

1) how much money is this worth? Sadly, sometimes it's better to abandon some unfairness simply out of economy.

2) That said, evidence always helps you. (do you have files showing your progress or finished work on your computer? e-mails of agreement or progress w/ defendant?) Even without that, oral agreements are still binding. If it's worth it to take to court, even a he-said she-said situation is perfectly acceptable to put before a jury.

3) They can't refuse your product (I don't like it) and still take it. This is about as fundamental as it gets. Even if they take it off, you might be able to demand something for the benefit of having it on their site. Still, they might argue that you fell short and actually somehow breached (if they gave you specifics and you deviated), and they are merely attempting ti mitigate their losses by putting up your bad logo while a new one is drawn in the meantime.

Really, to some degree this comes down to the agreement you two had, and what the language and specific terms were.

P.S. I'm not a lawyer, I'm a law student. My advice does not substitute for a real lawyer's. We don't have an attorney-client relationship. I reccommend getting an attorney.

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I wanted to add, a demand letter might be your best bet (I'm guessing this is a $100 to $2,000 job or so). Start collecting evidence -- ideally a lawyer will know how to get secure evidence. But if oyu're going at this pro se, maybe just screenshots of their websites using this logo, week after week, etc. I rethought it and believe you can avoid any copyright issues. Them owning the logo is as irrelevant as you owning land and saying "come fix up my land," then refusing to pay. YOur story suggests they agreed to pay you for a service, retained the benefit of that service, yet did not pay you.

Unless you sommehow fell short of your obligations, I would demand they pay. (If you did, theoretically they might counter-sue for damages from not having a "acceptable" logo when they wanted it). I'll note, though, this seems lika a bad argument if they accepted and used it.