Who owns a logo or design made partly with AI

In Japan, something generated by AI is protected by copyright only where a person made a creative contribution to it. A short prompt does not count. Creative edits a person makes afterwards do. So when you buy design work that used generative AI, ask which parts were generated and how they were reworked, and check that the contract transfers copyright including the rights in Articles 27 and 28 of the Copyright Act.

What the Agency for Cultural Affairs said

The reference document is General Understanding on AI and Copyright, adopted on March 15, 2024 by the Legal System Subcommittee of the Council for Cultural Affairs' Copyright Subdivision. It is neither a statute nor a court ruling. The subcommittee wrote it because Japan had no case law on generative AI yet, and for now it is the reference lawyers work from.

Its starting points are short. AI has no legal personality, so it cannot be an author. If AI output is a copyrighted work, the author is the person who used the AI to create it. And where the instructions to the AI stay at the level of an idea and do not reach expression, the output is not a copyrighted work.

The three factors

The paper says the question is decided case by case, by how much creative contribution has built up, beyond mere effort. It gives three examples of what counts.

The amount and content of the prompt. Detailed instructions that specify creative expression make a contribution more likely. A long prompt that only describes ideas does not help.

The number of attempts. Generating many times does not count on its own. Generating, checking the result, and revising the instructions in rounds can.

Selection among outputs. Picking one image from several does not count on its own, though the paper notes that selection is part of some acts that are normally creative.

Then the line that matters most for design work: where a person adds creative edits to AI output, those parts are normally protected. The rest is not affected.

What that means for a logo

Picture a logo where the symbol came out of an image model with a one line prompt and was used as is. Under this reading, the symbol may have no copyright at all. Your company can still use it. What you lose is the ability to stop someone else copying it on copyright grounds.

The paper notes that copying material without copyright can still be an unlawful act under civil law where it infringes business interests, but case law sets a high bar for that. For a logo there is a separate system: trademark registration. As the Japan Patent Office explains, a trademark right arises only when the mark is filed and registered with the JPO. Once registered, the owner has the exclusive right to use it for the goods or services named in the registration, can stop others using an identical or similar mark on identical or similar goods or services, and can seek an injunction and damages. The right lasts 10 years and can be renewed any number of times. It works differently from copyright, so it is worth discussing with a patent attorney before launch.

A symbol a designer has redrawn, refined and built into a system of shapes is a different object. The redrawn parts carry the designer's expression, and that is what the contract can transfer to you.

The other direction: looking too much like someone else's work

Infringement is judged the same way with or without AI: similarity to an existing work, and reliance on it. The paper notes that resembling only the style of an artist or brand is a resemblance of ideas, and does not by itself infringe. Close resemblance in expression does, whatever tool produced it.

Ask your designer how they check generated material against existing logos and well known marks before it goes into a proposal.

The clause most contracts get wrong

Article 61(2) of the Copyright Act says that if a copyright transfer does not specifically name the rights in Article 27 (translation and adaptation) and Article 28 (rights in derivative works), those rights are presumed to stay with the person who transferred it. A contract that says "all copyright transfers to the client" can leave you unable to adapt your own logo freely.

IPA's model contract for agile development shows the usual fix. Its Article 17 transfers copyright "including the rights in Articles 27 and 28", at the point the work is confirmed complete and paid for, and has the vendor agree not to exercise moral rights. Moral rights cannot be transferred in Japan, so that non-exercise promise is the standard way to cover them.

What to ask before you accept the work

Ask which elements were generated with AI and which tools were used, and whether those tools' terms allow commercial use of their output. Ask for the working files: layered source files show the human work in a way a flat export cannot. Ask how the designer checked for resemblance to existing marks.

Avoiding AI in design is not the point. Generative tools are good at early exploration, and we have written about building portfolio sites with them. What you are paying for sits in the human decisions after that, and the contract and the files should show where those decisions are. For the data side of AI contracts, see what METI's checklist says to check in an AI contract.