What the Heck Do I Own?: A Business Owner PSA

Bear with my analogies here for a minute…

If you bought a house, would you let your real estate agent manage the only set of keys so you had to ask for permission to enter the front door? Or if you got a sweet new ride — would you let the car salesman take a joyride whenever he wanted to?

Nope, I bet you wouldn’t, and this makes sense because these are tangible items of which we can easily define ownership.

Here’s my point: treat intellectual property like you would physical property and make sure you know what you own. So, whether you’re buying a website, a logo, a professionally designed Twitter or Facebook page — whatever it is, make sure it’s clearly defined in the contract who owns what and who just has usage rights. And if you own it (like you should your logo and URL), put it under lock and key like you would any valuable item. Ask for all original files, passwords, and login information from your designer or subcontractor, keep them in a safe folder, and make a backup (or two) should anything happen to the originals.

I can’t tell you how many times we’ve been asked to do a recon mission to figure out who owns www.whatever.com, or to dig the original logo design file out of the archives of some design firm.  It can be a lot of work, and sometimes we run into the unfortunate situation where our client (the business owner) does not actually own something important like his logo or URL, and now has to start from scratch.

So, moral of the story: make sure you know what you’re signing up for when you purchase design work, and be responsible for safeguarding everything you own.