Do you protect your sign designs from infringement by another company? Do you take any number of basic preventative steps to protect your designs from being used without compensation by others?

 

These two questions formed the core of a survey taken by Sign and Digital Graphics readers in April, with more than 430 total replies. Yet the results were troubling: over the entire base of respondents, just 61.5 percent—less than two of three shops—protected their designs in any way.

 

Extrapolate that percentage to roughly 30,000 shops in the United States: that means more than 11,000 sign shops are doing nothing to protect their designs from being copied or used by others, without compensation. That is a lot of unnecessary exposure for hard work already done. We can do better.

 

I want to use this month’s column, and one in the future, to delve into the subject of protecting sign design, from both a legal and practical view. Copyright infringement is against the law, of course. But behind that simple statement are myriad challenges amplified by digital technologies. 

 

For instance, a great design brought forward by one company could be photographed on a smart phone, transmitted to a company on the other side of the country or another part of the world, and made into multiple signs or graphics—all before a workday is very far along. In this case, too, the originator of the design may well have protected its work, for naught.

 

But let’s start with our survey results, not entirely discouraging, but still leaving too much exposure for sign and graphics providers to lose their investment in creative work.

The first question asked respondents, “For the design services you create and/or sell, do you protect your designs from use by another person or company without paying you for your design?”

 

As noted above, 61.5 percent of respondents answered “Yes.” Digging a little deeper reveals how different types of sign companies replied (See Table 1.) Electric sign companies had the highest protection rate at 78.9 percent. Vinyl signshops had the lowest rate at 43.1 percent. Commercial sign companies and digital graphics printers protected their work at 66.7 percent, and 63.7 percent, respectively.

 

The size of the sign company also showed differences among the respondents, as measured by reported annual revenues derived from signs and graphics. The smallest category, annual revenue of $25,000 or less, reported the lowest design protection rate, of 43.6 percent. (See Table 2.)

 

From that point, however, the rate of protecting design improved as the size of the company increased. For those companies with annual revenue of more than $25,000 to $250,000, the design protection rate increased to 62.3 percent. For companies larger than $250,000 in annual revenues (up to $20 million) the rate jumped to 74.4 percent.

 

The next question in the survey was asked only for those companies that had responded that they protected their design work. Here we asked the “How” question, suggesting several alternatives (although many respondents offered their own options, which we will detail in a future column.) As Table 3 notes, two approaches are used to protect sign design: marking or signifying the design as protected, and getting a deposit at some point in the process. 

 

More than 70 percent of the respondents marked their design as legally protected, and 24.1 percent used a separate document noting their design work was legally protected. While asking for a deposit with some clients can be tricky, a strong percentage of those companies protecting their design, did just that, with 48.7 percent asking for a deposit before sign design actually began, and 13.8 percent asking for some payment before design was completed.

 

The final question dealt with actions taken to notify a company suspected of taking original design work for use without compensation to its creator. Here, too, several alternatives were suggested but respondents offered their own options, also to be detailed in a future column.

 

The most-used actions involved letters or phone calls to the offending party, with 62.3 percent sending a letter or calling another company (the one suspected of using the protected design) and 43.2 percent also sending a letter or calling the sign owner. 

Legal action also was used by a smaller percentage of respondents that protected design. Just 17.6 percent retained an attorney, while 8 percent took the step of filing a claim or lawsuit.

 

What this survey showed me is a fairly engaged part of the sign market that knows to at least attempt to protect its sign design work. A future column will examine both the legal and practical aspects of these protections, including actions that have worked for some of our responding companies.