Because you’re getting paid to do the design at work the copyrights belong to your employer under the “Work For Hire” provisions of copyright law.

“Our client orders have never included contracts”

Then it’s up to the lawyers to decide. ;0)

Typically, though, your employer owns anything you create while employed.

And who knows if the client registered the work themselves. Its rare for a designer (or the designers employer) to hold the copyright on a logo or identity they created for a client, no matter who did the work.

How’s it work if you’re a freelancer, then? You own it by default?

If 10 years later a company is huge and using your logo, could you feasibly sue for back-royalties if there’s no contract?

If 10 years later a company is huge and using your logo, could you feasibly sue for back-royalties if there’s no contract?

Not likely—after all, without a contract there’s no reason for a court to believe that there was ever any expectation of royalty payments on the part of either party.

There is so much confusion between trademark and copyright here. A creator automatically has copyright to his creation unless it is explicitly signed away, which means, as the artist, you can reproduce it to say “look what I did” and nobody can stop you. The customer, implicitly if not explicitly, has paid for the non-exclusive right to copy it as well, and the right to register it as a trademark. When they own it as a trademark, that means they own its association with a certain trade. If you’ve done a logo for Whizzo Cookie Company, you have the right to use it to sell yourself as a designer, but you don’t have the right to use it to sell your own cookies. Arguably, you don’t have the right to make money off the brand in any way they potentially could, like Whizzo Cookies T-shirts. This doesn’t mean you can’t still make money off it, like by putting it in a design book as an instructional example, and selling that book. Putting it on the cover, though, is when you start treading on the blurry line where lawyers just have to fight it out.

Copyright isn’t like a ball that you have to stop holding to hand to someone else; it can be in multiple places at once. If you designed something under employ of a design business, both they and you can use it as a portfolio example, and neither of you can to stop the other from doing so, unless you explicitly gave it up that right in the employment contract. If you didn’t sign anything that actually says what you do is “work-for-hire”, then it isn’t. But reminding your employer that you know this is inadvisable unless you have a good reason to play with that fire.

in your case, most likely the client owns the trademark for trade purposes,
but you or your employer “own” the design for self promotional purposes.

it could also depend on what fonts you used.

huge freakin’ winking emoticon.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to reply!

Cerulean - very helpful stuff :)

” it could also depend on what fonts you used. “

A way out is : Don’t use any font. Do your own lettering. Choose a ’school of type’, say, a Bodoni. Just look at it, draw your own and apply to the logo. The resulting Bodoni will be genuinely unique. No head eyk . Can be Clarendon too .

” who owns the copyright on the artwork i create? “

Working at a print shop you do artwork that belongs to your employer; you make sure you get a copy of the files for yourself. Don’t collect fonts or DO it when using free fonts.