A new company has a logo designed by a freelance graphic designer, pays the invoice and a year later files it as a trademark. No one disputes that the company is the one using the logo. The question of who holds copyright in the logo, however, surfaces later: when the designer and the company part ways, when a buyer asks for proof of rights on a sale of the company, or when the same motif is offered to another client. A trademark and copyright are two separate protections, and with a logo they meet.
A logo as a commissioned work
If the logo is the result of creative activity, it is a work of authorship and the economic rights in it belong to the author. Those rights are inalienable (Section 20(2) of the Copyright Act), so they cannot be bought; the client obtains a licence. For a work created under a contract for work, the author is deemed to have consented to use for the purpose arising from the contract, and the client may use it for another purpose only with the author’s consent (Section 91(1)). The author retains considerable room for manoeuvre:
The author is entitled to use a commissioned work himself, as well as to grant consent to its use, unless otherwise agreed and unless this conflicts with the legitimate interests of the client.
— Section 91(2) of Act No. 185/2015 Coll. (unofficial English translation)
Whether the purpose of the contract also covered registration of the logo as a trademark, its modification in a rebranding and its use abroad depends on what the parties agreed. With an order placed by e-mail containing a single sentence about the price, that is hard to prove in a dispute. The Czech rules on commissioned works are the same in substance: the licence covers the purpose arising from the contract and the author may continue to use and license the work provided this does not conflict with the client’s legitimate interests (Section 61 of Act No. 121/2000 Sb.).
The position is different if the logo was created by your employee in the performance of work duties. In that case the employer exercises the economic rights unless otherwise agreed (Section 90(4)). With an agency, the agency exercises the rights of its employees, so you need the licence from the agency, together with an assurance that it does in fact hold the rights from the authors.
Copyright as a ground for opposition and for invalidity
When examining an application, the Industrial Property Office considers the absolute grounds, that is, whether the sign is at all capable of registration (Section 28(1) and (4) of Act No. 506/2009 Coll.). It does not itself check earlier rights of third parties; those may be asserted by their holders through oppositions, and an author is among them:
A sign shall not be entered in the register on the basis of oppositions to registration of the sign in the register (“oppositions”) filed under Section 30 […] by a person whose rights in a work of authorship could be affected by use of that sign, if the work was created before the date of filing of the application.
— Section 7(i) of Act No. 506/2009 Coll. (unofficial English translation)
Oppositions may be filed within three months of publication of the application under Section 30 of Act No. 506/2009 Coll. The risk does not end there. On an application by a person referred to in Section 7, the Office will declare a registered trademark invalid if the ground is proved (Section 35(3)), and a trademark infringing earlier rights in a work of authorship may also be cancelled on the basis of a court decision (Section 34(2)(c)). How oppositions proceed when you are on the other side is explained in oppositions against a trademark.
What the licence to a logo must contain
A licence to a logo that is to become a trademark should be exclusive and therefore in writing (Section 65(3)). It should cover all manners of use including modifications and adaptations, an unlimited territory, and a term running for the duration of the economic rights. In it the author should expressly consent to registration of the logo as a trademark in any country and undertake neither to file it himself nor to license it to others.
Do not forget consent to interference with the work in future modifications, which must be limited in scope and manner and, absent other agreement, is revocable (Section 18(5)), or the right to grant sub-licences and to assign the licence, for which the author’s prior consent is otherwise required (Section 72(1) and (2)). As regards remuneration, the law expressly permits a lump-sum payment where the work is used for corporate identity purposes (Section 69(4)(e)).
How to proceed
Before filing the application, reconstruct who created the logo and on what basis: the order, the invoice, the correspondence. If a licence is missing or unclear, agree it with the author while the relationship is working; negotiating after a dispute is harder. Only then do a search and the application itself make sense; their procedure and the choice between a Slovak, Czech and European trademark are discussed in the article registering a trademark.
We prepare the trademark application including the search through our trademark service, and the licence agreement with the designer or agency through copyright and licensing.
This article provides general legal information as at 12 September 2026. It does not constitute legal services or advice on your specific matter. Laws change and the details of your situation may differ. Check the appropriate course of action or contact us before making a decision.
