Illustrated Logo Licensing Question.

[asiakendrick]

I'm an upcoming illustrator. A local sorority has asked me to create a customized "crest/logo" to represent their organization. They are relatively new, having been around for only about 15 years. They want to use the logo for use of promoting, advertising, and possibly reselling on products and apparel. I want to know, am I entitled to receiving royalty payments based from a license agreement created between me and the sorority? Or should I charge a set amount? How would the entire process work? What should I include within the agreement? (Keeping in mind that I would be retaining my copyright of the work).

 

[Michael Wechsler]

I'm an upcoming illustrator. A local sorority has asked me to create a customized "crest/logo" to represent their organization. They are relatively new, having been around for only about 15 years. They want to use the logo for use of promoting, advertising, and possibly reselling on products and apparel. I want to know, am I entitled to receiving royalty payments based from a license agreement created between me and the sorority? Or should I charge a set amount? How would the entire process work? What should I include within the agreement? (Keeping in mind that I would be retaining my copyright of the work).

This is a very difficult question to answer.

(1) The deal is whatever you and the sorority that is comissioning the work want it to be. Nobody is "entitled" to anything.

(2) If I were negotiating with you, I'd never allow you to keep the rights to my company logo or a crest I might use for my products. Not because I don't like you or because I'm "being a lawyer" but because it doesn't make sense to me unless there was some added value, e.g. you are world famous designer Frank Lloyd Wright IV who has designed numerous products and is now working with this group to create a new product line. If we're talking about correspondence, marketing, advertising, etc., how would the sorority be able to function if, every time it wrote a letter on its own stationary, it would have to pay you $0.02?

To me, when an artist is asked to create a logo or crest, the artist is being hired for their skills to create a work product. I should own that work product and I will pay the artist. If you feel that you should be compensated for handing over all the "intellectual property rights" in the work you create, you can bargain for that with the sorority. If they feel that you're asking for too much money, you won't have a deal. This is the way I've handled this in the past.