Is it legal to use logos of customers/suppliers without their permission? The short answer is “it depends”.The first thing to check is any legal agreements with your customer/supplier that you already have in place, to find out if you have actually already agreed on how their logo will be dealt with.
Next, examine what you want to use the logo for, and be aware of any intellectual property rights that your customer/supplier may have. Generally, the simple solution is to get permission, but if you do want to use a logo without permission it may be legal to use it in some cases.
Legal Agreements You Have In Place
Some legal agreements will expressly state that neither party’s logo can be used by the other party, while other agreements will explicitly get permission from the customer/supplier to use their logo for marketing purposes. So just because you haven’t asked permission for that specific instance of using a customer’s logo, you may already have covered it in your legal agreement with them.
Intellectual Property
It’s important to know that logos can be protected by one of two types of intellectual property rights: trademark and copyright.Generally, most brand logos are trademarked, and you need to be careful that you aren’t infringing the brand’s trademark when you use their logo.
So how do you figure out if you’d be infringing their trademark?
Trademark infringement is “the unauthorized use of a trademark or service mark on or in connection with goods and/or services in a manner that is likely to cause confusion, deception, or mistake about the source of the goods and/or services.”If you are using your customer’s/suppliers logo to simply state that they/you are a user of your/their product, it’s unlikely that someone may get confused and think that the product is actually made by that customer/supplier. However, just because your use of the trademark isn’t likely to cause a “mistake about the source of the goods and/or services”, it may still cause confusion or deception, by making it look like the customer has endorsed you, when they haven’t.
Endorsements and Advertising
When you display a logo alongside your product in a list saying “our product is used by these customers”, this is an ‘implied’ endorsement. Many organisations need to carefully protect their logos, as the use of them may imply something far more important than a simple commercial endorsement. Consumers seeing the display of a logo would be reasonable in assuming that the company behind that logo has endorsed the use of your product, and if you don’t have permission to use it you may find yourself subject to a trademark claim for unauthorized use of a logo in a way that is likely to cause deception. The deception here is that the customer’s company has not actually endorsed the product, but you are making it look like they have. Instead, they have simply used the product, but they may have hated it!
Legal Use of Logo
Aside from the legal questions involved, why risk raising the ire of your customers in marketing your product? Instead you should be trying to keep your customers happy.So the short answer is that yes, using your customer’s logo without their permission will sometimes be legal. If you wanted to use it for an internal newsletter highlighting which customers had bought the most of your product, that would most likely be fine. If you wanted to display their logo in a TV advertisement trying to sell your product, that would be less likely to be okay. Assess each situation on a case-by-case basis, and if you aren’t sure then ask your customer for permission.
Disclaimer
This information is a general guide to further your knowledge about patenting and does not constitute legal advice.
