My design or yours !

When a Packaging design is successful, there are several who would like to claim it as theirs, there is always a debate, is it mine or is it yours ! While somewhere it is not very significant as to who actually owns the design but when it goes out into the market and to the consumers, the ownership issues become more and more significant. Many marketing wars are fought on the grounds of the trade-dress not being unique and hence it is imperative that the ownership is established .

The process of Copyrighting is a fairly simple exercise and one must go through this for all ones Packaging designs and artworks. In order to establish ownership and complete rights one needs to get the design assigned from the artist to the Brand owner and ensure that the Brand does not face any ownership battles at anytime in its life history.

The issue comes in when there are many who would like to claim it as theirs and want a stake in the success story. Here as well, the Packaging developers need to ensure that proper agreements are put into place so that if there are many agencies/ designers/ Brand consultants working on you Pack design, the contract ensures that the rights at any given time belongs to the Brand owners.

The other aspect of design ownership is the aspect of motivation , acknowledgement and a salute to those who have created the concept and the execution. The developers who have put in the passion and the sweat would feel cheated if the acknowledgements do not go to the rightful owners. Would they like to put in the same passion and energy next time when they work on your Brand, would they feel for the project the same way and add spirit to it. We need to remember that very often the achievement lies for many not in the remuneration but the public acknowledgement , not in the Promotions up the ladder but in the respect shown for the work.

The question is how to establish , who owns the design, as many would have worked on the design. Apparently the legal definition is the person who has finally put together the complete artwork, irrespective of where the inputs are coming from. While this seems to be most logical way to establish an ownership, but one wants to clearly disagree with this. Which is more important the Concept or its execution, thus who should be the design owner the Concept provider or the actual creator. Think ! do we have the answers, this question has worried many for time immemorial.