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By: Jaime Israel Gómez Dávila, Attorney.
In recent years, I have been fortunate to work hand in hand with professionals dedicated to creating names and graphic design focused on the development of visual identity for brands, which has led me to learn in which cases the experience of a lawyer is important for the healthy birth and development of a brand.
The lawyer, through the appropriate contracts, can avoid and/or anticipate conflicts derived from the provision of services that are carried out to create a name, a design, or a visual identity; both for the person who provides the services and for the person who hires them, since a document that guarantees the legal relationship will always leave the terms clear and the possible options in case of disagreement.
Additionally, the lawyer can intervene in the selection of the best options to choose as a brand name, since he can determine with the database of the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property which names have the greatest chance of being registered as trademarks, taking into account the business or industry in which the brand is going to operate.
Most of the time, the creation of a brand involves the creation of copyrights in favor of the people who participate (graphic designers, for example); and this situation is not always desirable, since it is whoever hires the agency or independent professionals who must have the copyright to properly exploit them. That is when the lawyer can intervene since copyright does not change ownership, so to speak, if there is no written contract involved.
Finally, when the brand is finished (both name, design, and visual identity) the lawyer can support the owner of the same to take the process before the corresponding authority to obtain the trademark registration, as well as other records that may be needed in the National Institute of Copyright of the elements that imply copyright.
