[esquivalience]

Fantastic concept! But I'm completely turned off by the IP terms ([1] below). This suggests LogoFox is pushing icons without doing IP checks, and selling them as finished logo designs without any assurance that the user won't get sued because of this.

Don't take this as negative feedback, but as a tip to re-think the legal side approach. Better would be that you

(a) you do some copyright checks and your terms state what checks have been done; and (b) once someone pays for the logo, they own the IP rights in the logo.

[1] "Third Party Design Resources – You may use purchased End Products outside of the Site, whether for commercial or personal purposes. Prior to creating and using any End Product, LogoFox highly recommends you to perform due diligence to determine that the use of the Design Resources is free of any adverse claims and is not subject to any third party rights. LogoFox may also use symbols provided by The Noun Project, a third party content provider that obtains the symbols from other third party contributors. All use of these Symbols is AT YOUR OWN RISK. "

[alantrum]

Hi, Alan from LogoFox here. I understand your concern regarding the IP terms.

I will make it straight and simple.

1) We use third-party icons from The Noun Project. We use their Pro API which gave us the right to use and sell the icons in part of the logos. Those icons are from thousand designers around the world. Normally when a designer uploads an icon on The Noun Project, they gave their IP. But, how can we be sure the icon uploaded is really their own creation? We can't.

2) We use hundreds of fonts. We check the license for all of them. But even with that, there is still a small risk of license infringement.

3) Thousand of logos are created every hour on LogoFox. Some will probably look similar to existing logos out there. For obvious reasons, we can't personally take the liability for the logo generated on the site. You have to make your due diligence.

Those 3 reasons mainly explain our current terms. This allows us to protect ourselves from any liability problems that may occur. Those liabilities also exist with a logo designed by a logo designer. The difference is, we don't deal with one logo a week but with thousand. So we adapted our terms accordingly. I hope you understand.

TLDR: no matter if your logo comes from a logo maker or a designer. You have to make your due diligence.

[justinlivi]

The problem with this model is that if you aren't able to do due diligence yourself due to technical restrictions, how are your end users supposed to overcome the even greater technical restrictions on due diligence that using your service imposes?

[alantrum]

Fundamentally, the problem is not the fact LogoFox is a logo maker. Because this applies also to logo designers. A due diligence is done on a case-by-case basis by someone specialized in doing this. We process thousands of logos, we naturally can't make a due diligence for every single one logo created.

[tokenizerrr]

Do you do refunds if you sell an illegal to use icon?

[andrewchambers]

Agreed, If I paid for this service, I would expect them to do that sort of due diligence. Otherwise what am I paying for?

[rsoto]

> what am I paying for?

A logo? Remove the automatic part and focus just on the deliverable; whether it's made by a computer or by a human, what you get is a few concepts before you select the one you like. And then you go with a lawyer to protect your IP.

[detaro]

Ok, why pay for a deliverable I might not be legally allowed to use, or might be associated with unknown follow-on costs to aquire that right? They are obtaining third-party resources somewhere, they would be in an excellent position to provide relevant documentation.

Unless I'm missing it in the terms, the user isn't even clearly allowed to use their designs as the basis of a known-safe design, since they don't explicitly permit changes to it?

[krisdol]

Third party resources? The problem isn't the stock images or shapes the generator uses, the problem is you could create a logo for "Disney" here or accidentally make something too close to Blogspot's logo because your company name has the same initials and you like the rounded square shape that gets generated.

[detaro]

Read the section of the terms of service being discussed. It's about "third-party design resources" and how you are using them at your own risk, not about a general guarantee that the logo isn't conflicting with an existing trademark etc.

When talking about the finished logo, they talk about "End Products".

They define "Design Resources" as

Throughout the process LogoFox will also make use of certain symbols, colors, fonts and other design elements (collectively known as "Design Resources”) [...]

and then state

d. Third Party Design Resources

[...] All use of these Symbols is AT YOUR OWN RISK. You shall abide by all copyright notices, trademark rules, and shall not use, copy, reproduce, modify, translate, publish, broadcast, transmit, distribute, perform, upload, display, license, sub-license, rent, lend, assign, gift, sell or otherwise transfer or distribute for any purposes whatsoever any portion of the Design Resources not owned by you: (i) without the express prior written consent of the respective owners or (ii) in any way that violates any third party right.

You acknowledge that some fonts and symbols used during the Design Process might have been licensed from a third party provider. Under no circumstances will LogoFox be liable in any way for any Design Resources, including, but not limited to, for any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of the use of any Materials or any part thereof.

Delivering a design where you can't even tell the customer about the license of the fonts you used is... weak. If you want to offer cheap designs, use open fonts or clearly tell the customer where they can get their own license, don't just let them figure it out themselves.

[ghostbrainalpha]

If you pay a logo designer, you will not have that assurance either.

It is literally impossible to vet an idea / logo / website name, before you even have it.

First you design, then you apply for protection.

[Phrodo_00]

He's not talking about trademark protection, but copyright permissions to the assets used in the logos. I'd absolutely expect to have explicit licensing to redistribute and modify a logo, and from the T&C, it doesn't look like you even get that.

[zodPod]

All they really do is take the thing you typed in and put in a few different fonts.. This doesn't seem worth any amount of money. I can do that in mspaint.

[debaserab2]

> And then you go with a lawyer to protect your IP.

Which makes this way more expensive than a normal logo created by an actual artist.

If I contract someone to make me a logo, I can normally safely assume there won’t be lingering IP issues after I have the deliverable.

[LeifCarrotson]

> If I contract someone to make me a logo, I can normally safely assume there won’t be lingering IP issues after I have the deliverable.

This clause is not about copyright on the logo itself. It's about trademark law and all the difficulties therein.

I understand your concern about copyright. In copyright, the source of the image is what matters, not its appearance: If you created your own logo that happens to be similar to an existing logo, but did not actually copy the existing item (and could prove that), you'd be fine. If you did copy it, and made significant changes until it didn't look confusingly like the original, you'd be guilty. But this isn't the problem that "perform due diligence to determine that the use of the Design Resources is free of any adverse claims and is not subject to any third party rights" is warning you about.

Trademark law is different than copyright law. If you create a brand new logo that, unfortunately, happens to look by random chance similar to another logo that already exists in your market but you didn't know about, that's an IP issue. You need to search out and differentiate your logo from all conflicting logos that already exist.

This search is why no artist or automatic logo generator could guarantee that you're able to use the outputs.

[debaserab2]

While you're correct, I don't think that's why the terms are stated as they are. This site is aggregating symbols and appears to be completely uninformed about the origin's copyright. The chance that one of the icons has licensing terms is pretty high.

[krisdol]

Only if your contract specifically states that the artist will check your logo against registered trademarks for potential infringement. Usually that requires two people, an IP lawyer and a logo designer.

[debaserab2]

You're technically correct, but for a simple logo designed by an artist doesn't usually need an IP lawyer as long as the concept is unique enough. It's not going to be an issue nearly as much as if the logo was sourced from an icon aggregator site that completely disavowed any copyright claims.

[mcny]

> Agreed, If I paid for this service, I would expect them to do that sort of due diligence. Otherwise what am I paying for?

How though? For example, this is one of the things I got when I typed apple: https://d30y9cdsu7xlg0.cloudfront.net/png/620675-200.png imgur at https://i.imgur.com/RmnqgG2.png

How does anyone know if you have the legal right to use this? I guess you could litigate over it and have a judge rule that you own it? What I am trying to say is that the straight forward way to legal protection is to include lawyer fees in whatever you charge customers. You can either make your product more expensive or you can try make things work for a lot more people. I don't think you can do both (once again I would love to be proven wrong).

Edit: it seems to be talking about copyright. I retract my comment. I think if you pay money, you should definitely have a full copyright license to do everything you need to do with a logo that identifies your business.

[BMorearty]

Really? You're paying for logo creation. Due diligence is different and likely more costly. I see no problem with the current model because it provides a useful service for a fee. Just because it doesn't provide a more useful service for a larger fee doesn't make it useless.

[DaTruthHurts]

.

[DaTruthHurts]

Wow whats with the instant downvotes? Come on guys get off the high horses and have a little tolerance for banter. This project will most likely trap you in some sort of legal issues. I just summed it

[keithnz]

definitely not checking anything. I put my name in "Keith" and it generated a logo with my name and KKK above it.

1) Pretty sure that branding is taken

2) Let's say I was ignorant of the bed sheet brigade, it would be pretty bad to get a logo that's culturally flawed.

[pbhjpbhj]

Companies pay thousands for logos that are culturally flawed, or just, y'know flawed. OGC was a big example a few years back [the logo version looks rather like a person playing with their penis].

[gustix]

No design agency will ever agree on liability or do IP research on a project with as tiny budget as this service.

If the client only wants to pay $29 or even $990, that barely covers a meeting and a few sketches.