Most people assume that paying for a logo means owning it. In Malaysia that assumption is usually correct — which makes it more dangerous, not less, because the exception is invisible unless you go looking.
The default is in your favour
Section 26(2) of the Copyright Act 1987 provides that where a work is commissioned by someone who pays for it, copyright is deemed transferred to the person who commissioned it.
That is a genuinely buyer-friendly default, and it differs from what people who have worked in other jurisdictions often expect.
The words that undo it
The same subsection ends with a qualifier: the transfer applies subject to any agreement between the parties excluding or limiting it.
So the default holds right up until a contract says otherwise — and a contract that says otherwise is not unusual or improper. Plenty of studios reserve rights deliberately, particularly where a design is built on their own existing work.
The point is only that the position is set by the paperwork, and the paperwork is often a PDF nobody opened.
Working files are a separate question
Copyright and file formats are not the same thing. You can hold the copyright to a logo and still only possess a flattened PNG of it — which means the next studio redraws it, and the redraw is never quite identical.
Ask for the editable source files, the fonts used and licensed, and the colour values. Ask at the point of final payment, when the leverage is real.
Registration is a different thing again
Copyright arises automatically. A trademark does not — that is a registration, and it is what actually stops someone else using your name in your market.
Search the name before anyone designs anything. MyIPO’s trademark search is free and takes minutes, and finding a conflict at that point costs you an afternoon. Finding it after launch costs you the brand.
Four questions
- Does your contract vary the default position under section 26(2)?
- What working files do we receive, and in what formats?
- Are the fonts licensed to us, or to you?
- Has anyone searched this name at MyIPO?
None of these are adversarial. They are the questions that separate a handover from a hand-wave.