You paid the invoice, received the files and started using the logo, the website or the system. So is it yours? In Mexico the answer is usually yes, but for reasons most people get wrong, and with three exceptions that decide real cases.
What the law actually says
Unless agreed otherwise, the person or company that commissions the production of a work holds the economic rights in it (article 83 of the Mexican Federal Copyright Law). So a logo you commissioned from a designer is, by default, yours.
What the designer keeps is the right to be credited as author for the part they created. That is a moral right, and moral rights are inalienable, imprescriptible, unwaivable and not subject to seizure (article 19). No contract removes them, and it is better to agree the credit openly than to pretend the point away.
The three exceptions that overturn the default
- Agreed otherwise. The default applies only in the absence of agreement. Many studios and agencies work on terms, a proposal or a licence that expressly keeps ownership with them and grants you use. If you signed it, it governs.
- It was not a commission. If what you bought was a licence over something that already existed, a template, a font, a stock image, a module of code, then nothing was commissioned and nothing passed to you beyond the licence terms.
- It was an employee, not a supplier. Where there is a written individual employment contract and nothing else agreed, economic rights are presumed split equally between employer and employee; with no written contract they belong to the employee (article 84). Software is the exception: programs created by employees in the exercise of their duties belong to the employer (article 103).
Why you still want the document
Because the argument is never about the rule. It is about which rule applies: was this a commission or a licence, a supplier or an employee. The agreement is what settles that in advance instead of years later.
And because of a deadline nobody expects. Transfers of economic rights must be in writing or they are null by operation of law, and every transfer is onerous and temporary (article 30). Where no term is stated, the transfer is taken to last five years (article 33). Computer programs are the express exception: there, the assignment has no time limit (article 103).
What to ask for, in practice
- A written assignment identifying the works, including later versions.
- An express term, because silence means five years.
- Delivery of source files, not only the exported output.
- A warranty that the work is original and clears any third-party material used.
- Agreed wording on credit, since the moral right cannot be waived.
If you never signed anything
You are probably in a better position than you feared, but not a documented one, and an investor or a buyer will ask for documents rather than presumptions. The fix is a confirmatory assignment signed now covering work delivered in the past. Most creators sign it without difficulty years later; almost none will when the relationship has already soured.