An ownership gap has no symptoms until the day it has consequences.
20 pages · no email required · published 29 September 2026
The question of who owns a brand almost never arises when the brand is commissioned. It arises at a trigger event — an award, a merger, a rebrand, a funder asking during due diligence.
By definition those are moments when an organisation needs the answer immediately and has no time to construct it. And the answer is rarely clean: not that the organisation owns its brand, or that the designer does, but that nobody wrote anything down.
This paper sets out a framework. It defines three ownership arrangements and says plainly what each gives and withholds. It explains where the law is settled and where it is not. It offers a self-audit any organisation can complete in an afternoon.
Most clients do not know who owns the work they commission. That is not their failure — it is the failure of an industry that learned to leave the question vague on purpose.
Under United States law, a commissioned work is only "made for hire" if it falls within one of nine categories named in the statute.
A logo is not on that list. Neither is an identity system, a guidelines document, a website, a photograph, or copy. A work-for-hire clause covering any of them is not partially effective — it is void.
Canada is stricter still. Since 2012 there has been no commissioned-work exception at all, and no work-for-hire doctrine for contractors. A commissioned logo belongs to the designer unless there is a signed written assignment.
The paper sets out both, sourced to primary statute and reviewed by counsel.
We have said repeatedly that ownership gaps are common in this sector. We have seen it often enough to build a practice around it. But we cannot tell you how common — and nobody can, because nobody has asked.
You do not need your paperwork in order to answer. The organisations that do not are the ones we most need to hear from.
Full methodology published alongside the findings, including the ways the sample is limited. This is a self-selected sample, not a representative one, and the report will say so in the body rather than only in an appendix.
Findings free to everyone, whether or not they took part.
Results that cut against us get published too. If the data shows the problem is smaller than we have argued, or that custodianship makes less difference than we claim, that goes in the report. A study whose findings can only support the author is not a study.
David A. León Contreras is a creative director, not an attorney. The paper describes contract practice from the commissioning side and sets out a framework used by one studio. It does not create a lawyer–client relationship and is not a substitute for advice on your own circumstances.
The law summarised is that of the United States and Canada. If your organisation operates elsewhere, none of it can be assumed to apply. Chapter 02 was reviewed by counsel prior to publication; that review does not extend to any reader's situation.
4to Studio LLC sells brand development and a post-delivery custodianship retainer. Chapter 05 argues for a category of service the studio is paid to provide.
The disclosure appears in that chapter at the point of argument, not in a footnote — and the chapter is written so the argument holds regardless of who performs the work, including the option that involves paying us nothing.