It's ok it says "Unofficial".....

[Brixhamboy]

If you made the design then copyright is yours automatically. You do not need to prove 'copyright' merely origination and that can be achieved by ensuring you have an irrefutable method of dating the original.

With a photograph you would have had a negative (one of the MANY advantages of film) but with digital media this could be seen as a potential problem so a simple solution is to email yourself the artwork/image and copy it to someone trustworthy. The date is then recorded and you could legitimately place a © and date together with your name on the attachment just for belt, braces and to ensure even that cannot be copied!!!

Alternatively the good old Royal Mail special delivery signed for CD in an envelope works every time. Keep the original on some kind of recordable media inside a sealed, tracked and signed for envelope and should a dispute ever arise it can be opened by a solicitor and the date extracted by same together with supporting date of the RM delivery.

[Quinsfan]

Brixhamboy
I know this is going off topic slightly.
What if a customer comes to me and asks me to design a logo for there new business and put it on 100 mugs. I do the work and charge accordingly. The client then asks me for the logo file as he wants a company to do some livery on there vehicles. Who owns the logo? Is it my customer as has they paid me for it or can I still ask the signage firm for a fee to use the logo?

[pisquee]

Quinsfan - this is entirely up to you and the client asking you to do the design to negotiate, and something you need to be mindful of from the start on this type of deal - are you selling him the design, ie, he pays you as the designer to design something for him and it is then his to do with as he pleases, or are you licensing him a use of that design but the image itself still belongs to you - and then in terms of the license, what time scale are you licensing the use of the design for, for what geographic territory and for use in what circumstances/products. Each thing attracts different levels of payments, in terms of one offs, and/or royalties per use/per sale.
I think the licensing route would be more applicable to an artwork type design, rather than a logo, where I would think the norm would be to design the logo for the client, and the client pays a one-off fee to buy the logo/design outright.

[Brixhamboy]

The concept of copyright is really very simple - it belongs to the person who originates something. If you have been asked to create a design then it is entirely up to you to decide in advance of accepting the commission as to whether you will retain copyright or not. Copyright controls the right to reproduce something NOT the ownership of something so it is conceivable that your 'client' could own the design whilst you retain copyright. Under these circumstances it is not possible for you or the client to reproduce the design without the consent of the other.

As a professional photographer of many years standing I would retain copyright automatically even if a client commissions me to undertake work. The reproduction of the images would then be a form of licence granted to the client for the specific purpose agreed at the outset. That way, if the client wished to use the same images again he/she would have to come back to me to negotiate further use.

In your specific case, the customer might ask for a logo design but you can decide whether you wish to retain control of that loco. Don't be too precious if the company is small! Basically, you charge a design fee which should include its use for the purpose stated - 100 mugs. Anything else then is open to negotiation and the value of your design will depend greatly on the importance of the customer - a design for joe Bloggs would merit a lesser fee than one for, say, Nike!

Unless you agree in advance of the service that the design copyright passes to the customer then the copyright remains yours automatically even if the 'ownership' of the design ultimately belongs to the customer.