How many
sign companies or even freelance graphic designers claim an ongoing copyright ownership of a logo they designed for another company? If I design a logo for someone, either thru my day job or freelance after hours for non-
sign-related work I'm going to charge them one time and then be done with it. The design itself and time involved researching and creating it is worth something. But once the client buys that logo it should belong to the client outright. You can maintain the original files and even charge fees when they need something done with the design or logo files. Regardless of the arrangement it's best to get details in writing, even a contract in some cases.
This is different from charging first use serial rights for something like an illustration published in a magazine. The illustrator gets to keep the original piece of artwork and the copyright. If the magazine wants to buy the image outright, even the original artwork, then those terms get negotiated for the illustrator to get paid considerably more money.
Many of us have been burned by clients who took our PDF sketches to rivals and had them reproduce the work as is. Once in awhile the rip-off is a bad enough act to justify getting attorneys involved. Most of the time I just blow it off. The vast majority of our clients are pretty trustworthy. When I do get a bad feeling about a client I'll do several things to digitally trash up things like PDFs so any
sign company trying to use it will have lots of technical problems.
Then there's jobs where there's not much you can protect in the design. If the client gives you a bunch of assets (photos, logos, etc) where little in the design is created from scratch there's not much that can be protected. Major companies all have their branding guidelines where
signs are supposed to be composed in a specific way. In those cases you're just doing leg work and not creating anything new. A rival
sign company can try to undercut your bid with the same exact design. Your relationship with that client could make the difference on them taking the lower bid.
*shrugs*
