Why You Can't Register Your Canva Logo as a Trademark

If you designed your logo on Canva, you probably can't register it as a trademark. Your logo helps your customers recognize your brand, but if it was designed with a Canva template, it may not be unique enough to legally function as a trademark. It's also against Canva's policies to register a design that uses its elements as a trademark.

Tune in for a discussion on the implications of using Canva to design your logo and what to do instead.

Key Takeaways

• When you create a design using Canva, you receive a license to use any pre-designed pieces (elements) in your design. You do not own those elements
• By definition, to be a trademark, a design has to be unique enough to identify a particular company. A template logo is probably not unique enough to function as a trademark
• If your logo is just a stylized version of your business name, you'll get broader trademark protection if you register the words of your business name than the logo

Resources Mentioned

• Learn more about trademark registration services
• Check out the Trademark Roadmap DIY trademarks course
• Canva's help doc on this topic 
• Watch the free masterclass 
• Follow Amy on Instagram @artfulcontracts

Next Steps

Thank you so much for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, please reach out and let me know by sending me a DM on Instagram @artfulcontracts

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Episode Transcript

This episode is probably gonna be on the shorter side, but it's an important topic that I don't think people have really thought about, and it's important, so we're just gonna do it anyway. So if you designed your logo on Canva, you probably can't register it as a trademark. That's what we're gonna talk about today.

Hey, I'm Amy Nessheim, licensed attorney for online business owners and founder of my own business, Artful Contracts. You're listening to Legal Made Easy, the show that makes the legal aspects of online business easy to understand and implement so you can grow your business with confidence knowing you've got it all covered. Let's dive in.

Alright, to really get into this, you have to have a clear understanding of the difference between a copyright and a trademark. At the basic level, copyrights protect content and trademarks protect branding. When I say content, I mean anything that is the unique creation of your imagination or creativity that is put down into fixed format, is the phrase they use, but it means like something recorded, written down, not just conceptual, not just an idea. It's reproducible in some way.

So that could be a digital image, it could be something written, it could be a document, it could be a painting, that type of thing. It's it's fixed and there is a way of recording it. It's reproducible because it exists. It's not just an idea. Trademarks are anything that identifies a brand to a customer. Anything that a customer sees or hears or experiences and then associates immediately makes an association with a certain company or brand, that is a trademark.

Now logos are a little bit of both. And that's where this confusion comes in with Canva. That's where this issue comes up. Logos are copyrightable in that it's a it's a drawing, right? It's a digital image. And there are rights that go along with that that are copyright issues instead of trademark issues. Once that logo, once that drawing becomes associated with a brand, it is also a trademark. The fact that it's a certain type of drawing, the fact that it's a business name drawn in a certain way, or it's a symbol that usually, you know, a typical logo-looking type drawing, that doesn't matter for it to become a trademark. It has to be associated with a brand, with a business that is offering goods or services to the public, and it has to be recognizable as associated with that company.

So by using a drawing as a trademark, by using it as something that indicates the source of goods or services, it becomes a trademark. But the person who drew it still has copyright rights in that drawing. I'm using the phrase drawing, but for ease of communication, but it could also be, you know, a digital rendering, a design, graphic design of some kind, image, whatever.

So here's how this relates to Canva. Canva is a graphic design platform. They provide templates for logos to start with, and they give you a license to use all of that. Canva owns the copyright to all of the content that they provide, what they call elements. So it's the little pre-designed pieces that you can add into a design. Those are all called elements. So like the lines, the shapes, the arrows, the squiggles, splotches, whatever. Those are all owned by Canva. Canva owns the copyright and has given you a license to use them. That license is that's just the legal word for permission, and that permission can be limited in whatever way the owner wants it to be.

Canva has decided to limit the license that they give you for their elements and explicitly do not allow you to use those elements in a trademark. You can go look at their terms of use, and it says right in there that you agree using their software, you agree not to use any of their elements in a trademark. They have help documentation on this that says the same thing.

So the first reason that you can't register your Canva logo as a trademark is because Canva says you can't. The next reason is a little bit more nuanced and is why I did the whole explanation a minute ago about copyrights versus trademarks. So I posted about this on Instagram. I posted a reel and somebody asked the question, okay, so why, if this is part of Canva's policies, why do they give you a whole bunch of templates for how to make a logo inside of Canva? And they call them like logo templates, but you're not allowed to actually use them as a trademark.

So here's why. Like I already said, Canva gives you a license to use all of their elements in their design subject to certain limitations. That license that they give you is a non-exclusive license. That means that they give thousands of other people the same permissions to use the same design elements in their designs. And what they're giving you is a license to use their copyrighted material.

A trademark, by definition, can only be used by one person because it has to be unique to a single company. Other people can't use the Nike swoosh because it would be confusing to consumers if there were Nike swooshes all over the place. If the point is to identify a single company as the source of goods or services, then you can't have multiple companies using the same design as a trademark.

That means that non-exclusive content, content that is allowed to be used by many, many people, legally speaking, cannot function as a trademark because it is not unique. And if you were to design something in Canva and then register the trademark for it, no one else would be able to use that same design. So that template, if you used a template and then registered it, other people would thereby be prohibited from using that same design, which goes against Canva's whole model of providing templates that a bunch of people can use.

So when they say that you can't use their design elements in a trademark, they're protecting their own business model because they don't want you using their design and then trying to prevent other people from using it. You also legally can't do that just because you don't own the design. When you submit your trademark application with the USPTO, you have to certify that you have exclusive ownership of that design. So you can't sign the application if you're using a logo that is non-exclusive to you.

Now, a couple caveats or limitations I want to put on this. Number one, Canva's rule that you can't use your designs you made on Canva as a trademark. Only apply if you have any of their elements, any of their pre-designed little pieces inside of your logo. If all you do is use lines and text and fonts, that's fine. Those are explicitly excluded in the health documentation. It says that it's fine if you want to use lines and fonts.

But I caution you against registering if your logo is just a stylized version of your business name, then you might as well just register the business name, not the logo, because it'll get you broader protection.

Now, second, I hear some of you thinking, well, my logo has some elements from Canva, but it's not just a straight up template. I combined, you know, different pieces that they have, and it's definitely unique to me. Yes, I hear you. And that's why we have we have two different things working here at the same time. So yes, even if you design something that is totally unique, you didn't use one of their logo templates. If you used any of their pre-designed elements, you still can't register that as a trademark because you don't own it, so you can't certify that you own exclusive rights to all of those pieces of that design. And it's just against Canvas policies.

So there's another lesson in here. If you're working with a designer, you want to make sure that you have copyright ownership of your logo as well as the trademark rights in the logo handed over from that designer because you don't want them retaining the copyright and then creating something that is, you know, the same but slightly tweaked for another client because then you have that problem of it's not unique enough and you can't certify that you're the only person who uses it. And it's also important to make sure that your designer isn't using Canva because then you definitely have a problem.

Now, all of this is not to say that you can't use a design that you created on Canva as a representation of your brand. I know that a lot of you are probably I know there's a lot of people who might be panicking thinking, oh, I just I have to go take down my logo, I'm not allowed to use it. That's not the case. You don't have to go take down your logo. You just have to understand that it does not legally function as a trademark. It's kind of a fine point.

So you can use a design that you created on Canva as a symbol on your website as a symbol that goes along with your branding, but it does not legally function as a trademark because you don't have permission, number one, and two, it is probably not unique enough because other people also have rights to use the same design elements and could create something similar or the same or you know, too close for comfort.

If you want to learn more about the trademark process, if you have a logo that you love and that you know that you own and that is unique and you want to register it and make sure that no one else can use it, if you have a business name you love and want to make sure no one else can use it, I would love to talk to you about registering a trademark for your brand. Go to artfulcontracts.com/trademarks, set up a consultation call, and we'll talk through your goals for your brand, the entire trademark process, and answer any questions you have.

And that's the first step to getting started to register your trademark in 2023. And if you want to learn more about the trademark process, but you are not necessarily ready for the done for you investment. If you want to learn how to do it yourself or you have lots of trademarks that you want to register, so it's not necessarily economical to pay the done for you investment.

Right now, I also have a trademark registration course that walks you through how to register your trademarks on your own. It is a long and complicated process, so I don't recommend trying to figure it out on your own. But if you are a DIYer, then this course might be a good fit for you. Head over to the courses tab on my website to learn more about that or send me a DM on Instagram and we can talk through which is the right option for you. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll see you next time.