In Australia, the person or studio who designs your logo owns the copyright in it, automatically, the moment it’s created, unless a contract assigns that copyright to you in writing. Paying the invoice does not transfer ownership on its own. If your agreement is silent on ownership, the designer still owns the artwork and you may only have an implied licence to use it for the purpose you commissioned it for.
This catches founders out more than almost anything else in a branding project, because it feels like it should be obvious. It isn’t, and the law is specific about it.
The basic rule: the Copyright Act 1968
Under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth), copyright in an original artistic work, which a logo is, vests in its author the moment it’s created. No registration, no fee, no symbol required. Australia has no copyright register; there’s nothing to apply for.
The main exception is employment. If the designer made the logo as an employee, in the course of their job, their employer owns the copyright, not the individual designer. Almost everyone you’ll hire to design a logo, a freelancer, a studio, an agency, is engaged as an independent contractor rather than an employee, so this exception rarely helps a client by default.
For a contractor’s work to become yours, the Act requires an assignment: a transfer of ownership that must be in writing and signed by the person assigning it away (the designer). Nothing else does the job. Not a verbal agreement, not an invoice marked “logo design”, not a deposit, not “full payment received”. If there’s no signed written assignment, the designer remains the legal owner of the copyright even after the project is finished and paid for.
Assignment vs licence: these are not the same thing
Two different things can happen to a finished logo, and a contract needs to say which one you’re getting.
Assignment transfers ownership of the copyright itself. Once it’s assigned to you in writing, you own it the same way the designer did: you can modify it, licence it to others, stop the designer from using it, and you don’t need anyone’s ongoing permission.
Licence leaves ownership with the designer and gives you permission to use the work under stated conditions: which uses, which markets, exclusive or not, for how long. A licence can be broad enough to feel like ownership in daily use, and still not be ownership. If the studio closes, changes hands, or simply decides not to renew it, your right to the mark can be affected in a way it never would be under an assignment.
For a logo your business will build its brand on for years, an outright assignment of copyright is the standard, sensible ask. A licence might suit a one-off or limited use, but it’s the wrong structure for the mark on your signage, your website and your letterhead.
Copyright and trademark are two different protections
They get conflated constantly and they do different jobs.
Copyright protects the original artistic work, the actual logo file, from being copied. It’s automatic, free, and (subject to the assignment point above) sits with whoever created it. It doesn’t stop a competitor from using a similar-looking mark for their own business; it stops someone copying your specific artwork.
Trade mark protects your brand in the marketplace, the right to be the only business using that mark for your category of goods or services in Australia. It is not automatic. You apply for it and pay for it through IP Australia, and trade marks are not administered under the Copyright Act at all. A logo trade mark registration currently starts from around $250 and takes at least seven months to grant, longer if it’s opposed. Once registered it lasts 10 years and can be renewed indefinitely.
Owning the copyright in your logo does not give you a trade mark, and registering a trade mark does not require you to own the copyright, though in practice you generally want both settled: the copyright so no one else can claim the artwork, and the trade mark so no one else can trade under a confusingly similar mark in your industry.
Source files vs finished files
A logo “file” isn’t one thing. What you’re handed at the end of a project usually falls into two categories, and a contract should say which you get:
- Finished, or exported, files: the flattened, ready-to-use formats, PNG, JPG, a locked PDF, usually enough to put the logo on a website, a social profile or a printed flyer.
- Source, or working, files: the original editable artwork, typically a vector file (AI, EPS or an editable SVG), with the underlying paths, layers and any custom type work intact. Source files are what let you, or a different designer down the track, actually edit the mark: resize it cleanly, adjust a colour, rebuild it for a new use.
Owning the copyright in your logo is a separate question from having the source files in hand. You can legally own a mark and still not physically possess the file that lets you edit it, if the designer never handed it over. Before you sign, check both: who owns the copyright, and which file formats you’ll actually receive at the end.
Moral rights don’t transfer, even with a full assignment
Separate from copyright ownership, Australian law gives individual creators moral rights: the right to be attributed as the creator of the work, and the right for the work not to be falsely attributed or treated in a way that damages their reputation. Moral rights belong to the individual human creator personally. They can’t be sold, assigned or transferred, not even as part of a full copyright assignment, though a creator can consent in writing to certain uses that would otherwise infringe them.
In practice this rarely affects a business logo day to day; a logo isn’t usually credited the way a photograph or an illustration is, and most commercial design contracts include a consent clause covering routine business use. It’s still worth knowing it exists as a separate layer from the copyright question above.
AI-generated logos and the human authorship question
If a logo was generated wholly by an AI tool with no meaningful human creative input, its copyright status in Australia is genuinely unsettled. Australian copyright law has historically required a human author. Guidance from IP Australia on using AI to create IP notes that the more a human has shaped the outcome, selecting, editing, rejecting, refining, the stronger their claim to authorship of the result; a design that’s simply accepted as generated, with no human creative judgement applied, may not clear the bar for copyright protection at all.
What this means for a founder using an AI logo generator directly: there is real doubt about whether you own an enforceable copyright in that mark, because there may be no eligible human author for the law to vest it in. It’s a genuine reason to be cautious about building a brand entirely on an AI-generated logo with no designer involved, separate from the trademark risk that a mark generated from mass training data was never checked against existing registrations.
The clauses to look for before you sign
- An explicit assignment clause, not just a licence, stating that copyright in the final logo (and associated identity assets) transfers to you on payment, or on a stated milestone. Not every project includes this.
- Which file formats you receive, source and finished, named specifically rather than “all files”.
- Font licensing, handled separately. Most logos use a commercial typeface the designer has licensed for design use; that licence usually doesn’t cover you reusing the font elsewhere, so check whether you need your own licence for ongoing use.
- What happens if you don’t pay in full: some contracts make assignment conditional on final payment, which is reasonable, but you want to know that’s the trigger.
- A moral rights consent clause, so routine business use (resizing, recolouring, applying it across templates) doesn’t need the designer’s sign-off every time.
How we handle it at Maker Street
[CASEY TO CONFIRM: IP assignment timing, source files handed over, font licences]