If you get your logo created for you on Upwork, or on Fiverr, or one of those sites, or even by a local designer, does that mean that you can register your logo as a trademark? It depends on the terms and conditions and who actually owns the original copyright.
Some designers will give you something saying that you can own the copyright, even some designers on Fiverr or Upwork will say that when they create something for you, you own the copyright and can do whatever you want with it. But you do need to be careful, I tested this on Fiverr once by paying $5 USD for a unique logo, then I said I needed to own the copyright. They said yes, they would create it especially for me. They went away, created the logo and it was pretty good, I was quite happy.
But I took the logo and I put into Google Image Search and guess what? It was actually the logo of a multinational company, the artist didn’t even bother to change the colors. So that person on Fiverr can’t assign copyright in that logo to me, because they never owned it in the first place. It’s like me giving you my brother’s television set, I can’t do that because I don’t own it.
So can you register your logo as a trademark if somebody else has designed it for you? Yes, you can but you need to get it in writing that you own the copyright and you need to be careful of the source. Unfortunately there’s no real way to know if someone is going to give you an existing logo, but it certainly worth running the image through Google Image Search because that will give you some idea of its originality. My name is Cathryn Warburton and I am the Legal Lioness.
