Copyright of logos using illustrator symbols

Question

Hi, I am racking my brain over copyright of a logo I am designing. If I use an Illustrator symbol in the logo, do I retain full copyright of the logo? Presumably not, because that restrictions other people's ability to use that symbol in their own logos. Does anyone know the rules? Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

> I can use Helvetica for stuff without stepping on American Airline's toes.
But by doing so, you have not copyrighted the Helvetica glyph forms. In fact, type glyph shapes have been ruled not-copyrightable--and your example is probably one reason why. (A perhaps unfortunate, but unavoidable consquence is the proliferation of poorly-constructed knock-off fonts.)
But graphic
are copyrightable, and therefore another matter. If Leah uses a graphic supplied with Illustrator as part of a "logo", Leah cannot claim copyright of that graphic, because that graphic is
licensed to Leah as part of the software, not
owned by Leah, and certainly not
created by Leah.
Especially if the Illustrator-supplied graphic is the primary (or even a major) element of the overall "logo", I doubt that Leah could claim a copyright of the whole design.
Even if the graphic is not a major element, there is the whole matter of "derivitive works." If you take a graphic copyrighted by someone else, and use it as the basis for another work, your work can easily be deemed a "derivitve work" and you are subject to penalty. Not that Adobe would pursue someone for doing that with a piece of clipart they supply with software, of course--but that still doesn't change the question of whether Leah can rightly claim copyright of the derivitive work.
A derivitive work may be "your work", but that doesn't mean that the owner of the work from which it is derived can't lay claim to at least part of an monetary value gained from it. (There is a famous case of just that sort of thing involving a derivitive work that actually appeared on the cover of a particular version of Corel Draw's software box!)
Moreover, though, Leah, I'd advise you to consider the simple professionalism of the matter above the legal questions. A proper logo design should be
original because it should be
unique--especially if by "logo" you mean one that is done for hire.
'Course I'm no more a lawyer than I assume Scott is; the above is just as I understand it--but it also seems to me commensurate with good sense. There is no way I would charge a client for a work which included clip art that I didn't draw--as a proper logo design.
Also, Leah has not described the specific Symbol graphic at all. A Symbol can be anything. It could be nothing more than a square rotated 45 degrees (a graphic no one could claim copyright to), or it could be as elaborate as a city map of San Francisco.
JET