Logo Design Studio Pro™ from Macware, Inc. (Mac v1.5)

If your enterprise is in a position where you have to choose between paying a graphic designer to create a trademark or paying an attorney to do trademark clearance, then you may want to consider using this product. By all means, do not adopt a trademark without doing a legal review (i.e. trademark clearance) beforehand. Your enterprise needs to know if a proposed trademark is registrable AND if somebody else is using a confusingly similar trademark.

We recommend that a trademark be created using vector graphics instead of bitmap images. When a piece of vector art is enlarged or shrunk, the image remains smooth, clean and precise. As bitmap images are enlarged or shrunk, the image undergoes pixelation resulting in either a jagged, clunky image or a blurry one. Therefore, create the original art as a vector design, and then save copies as bitmap images for different types of media when appropriate. Bitmap file formats include: JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP and TIF. Vector graphic file formats include: EPS, SVG, PDF and AI.

This particular product claims to have over 1,000 objects (i.e art pieces) for users to utilize in creating a trademark for themselves. It also states that the user has the ability to import other pieces of art into the program. Great care should be exercised when using art work created by other people because of copyright laws. "License free" or "royalty free" art simply means that the owner of the copyright has given permission to use the art. It usually does not mean the owner has given up ownership rights. Licenses are also generally revokeable at will by the owner. Unless certain that a piece of artwork has gone into the public domain, written permission should be obtained from the copyright owner beforehand. A trademark generated by utilizing artwork created by somebody else could be deemed a derivative work infringing upon the rights of the original work's copyright owner. The documentation that comes with this product is silent on the issue of copyright ownership in the art objects included in its library.

This product also states that it has a library of taglines and slogans available to the user. Again, your enterprise needs to know if a proposed trademark is registrable AND if somebody else is using a confusingly similar trademark. A canned slogan or tagline increases the odds of somebody else using something very similar.

The trademark for this product is similar to a product from Summitsoft Corporation. Upon investigation, these two corporations have the same address. While these software publishers appear to be affiliated, it is in our opinion a mistake to give competeing products the same or a very similar name. If the board of directors of these corporations become unfreiendly towards each other or if one of these corporations is sold, they may have created a problem with regard to these products.