Using a company logo without permission is legal in a handful of well-defined situations — product reviews, reselling genuine goods, comparative advertising, news coverage, and clear parody — and illegal almost everywhere else. The dividing line is whether your use is likely to confuse consumers about who made the product or who is endorsing it. Get that wrong, and penalties run from a court order shutting down your use to statutory damages as high as $2,000,000 per counterfeit mark when the infringement is willful.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 U.S. Code 1117 – Recovery for Violation of Rights
The Test That Decides Every Case
The Lanham Act makes it illegal to use a reproduction or imitation of a registered mark in commerce when that use is likely to cause confusion or deceive consumers about the source of goods or services.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 U.S. Code 1114 – Remedies; Infringement; Innocent Infringement by Printers and Publishers Two triggers matter: the use must be “in commerce,” and it must create a “likelihood of confusion.” A logo on your bedroom wall is not in commerce. A logo on merchandise you are selling almost certainly is.p>
Courts do not decide confusion on gut feeling. The leading framework comes from Polaroid Corp. v. Polarad Electronics Corp., which weighs factors like the strength of the original mark, similarity between the two marks, how closely related the products are, evidence that real customers were actually confused, and whether the junior user acted in good faith.3Justia. Polaroid Corp v Polarad Electronics Corp, 287 F.2d 492 (2d Cir. 1961) Relatedness of goods carries a lot of weight in practice. A swoosh-like mark on athletic shoes is far more dangerous than the same design on kitchen spatulas, because consumers are more likely to assume a connection with a shoe brand than a cookware line.
Intent matters too. If you copied a logo to trade on someone else’s recognition, courts assume you probably succeeded in confusing people, and the case gets harder to defend.
Unregistered logos still receive some protection under Section 1125(a) of the Lanham Act, so the absence of a registration symbol on someone’s mark does not mean it is fair game.4Legal Information Institute. Trademark – Wex – US Law
When You Can Use a Logo Without Asking
Trademark law carves out several situations where referencing another company’s logo is legitimate. The common thread across all of them is honesty: the use cannot mislead anyone about who makes or endorses the product.
Identifying the Company Itself (Nominative Fair Use)
Nominative fair use lets you use a company’s logo to identify that company’s own products or services, not to brand your own. Three requirements apply: the product could not be easily identified without using the mark, you used only as much of the mark as reasonably necessary, and you did nothing to suggest the trademark owner sponsors or endorses you.5Ninth Circuit District and Bankruptcy Courts. 15.26 Defenses – Nominative Fair Use
This is the doctrine that lets a tech reviewer display Apple’s logo while reviewing an iPhone, or lets a repair shop mention the brand it services. The line to watch is proportionality. Showing a logo in a product comparison screenshot is very different from plastering it across your storefront in a way that suggests you are an authorized dealer.
Reselling Genuine Products
If you buy a genuine branded product and resell it, the first sale doctrine generally allows you to use the original trademark to identify what you are selling. A reseller who does nothing more than stock, display, and resell a product under its original mark violates no right under the Lanham Act.6Ninth Circuit District and Bankruptcy Courts. 15.25A Defenses – First Sale Listing a pair of Nike shoes on a resale platform with the Nike name and logo is fine.
The protection has limits. If you modify, repackage, or refurbish the product, you have to clearly disclose that. Selling a repainted handbag as if it were an unaltered Louis Vuitton original goes past what first sale protects.
Comparative Advertising
You can show a competitor’s logo in an ad to compare products head-to-head. The Federal Trade Commission calls comparative advertising “a source of important information to consumers” that “encourages product improvement and innovation.”7Federal Trade Commission. Statement of Policy Regarding Comparative Advertising The comparison has to be truthful and cannot suggest the competitor endorses you.
News Reporting and Commentary
Media outlets routinely display logos of the companies they cover. The federal dilution statute expressly excludes “all forms of news reporting and news commentary” from dilution claims.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 U.S. Code 1125 – False Designations of Origin, False Descriptions, and Dilution Forbidden The logo has to relate to the story, and the presentation should not imply a business relationship with the brand.
Parody and Satire
Imitating a famous logo to make a humorous or critical point is generally protected, as long as the parody is obvious enough that consumers get the joke rather than mistake the parody for the real thing. In Louis Vuitton Malletier S.A. v. Haute Diggity Dog, LLC, the Fourth Circuit upheld dog chew toys spoofing the Louis Vuitton logo because the parody was clear, consumers were unlikely to be confused, and the products worked as commentary on luxury branding.9Justia. Louis Vuitton v Haute Diggity Dog, No. 06-2267 (4th Cir. 2007) The dilution statute provides a specific safe harbor for parody, criticism, and commentary, provided the mark is not being used as a source identifier for the parodist’s own goods.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 U.S. Code 1125 – False Designations of Origin, False Descriptions, and Dilution Forbidden
A T-shirt that parodies the Starbucks logo to make a political point is far more defensible than one that uses a similar logo on a competing coffee product. The closer the parody gets to competing with the original in the same market, the weaker the defense becomes.
Where Social Media Trips People Up
The underlying rule does not change online, but the ways to trigger it multiply. Usernames that mimic brand names, profile images featuring company logos, and hashtags that suggest brand affiliation can all feed a finding of confusion. On Instagram, disputes frequently involve handles that resemble registered trademarks or misuse of verification badges to falsely signal authenticity.
Platforms enforce their own rules on top of the law. YouTube prohibits videos and channels that infringe trademarks and may block content or suspend channels if a logo is used in a way that “might cause confusion” about the source of a product.10Google Help. Trademark A product review that includes a company’s logo as honest commentary sits well within nominative fair use. An account that uses another company’s logo as its avatar to sell competing products does not.
Why Disclaimers Rarely Save a Bad Use
Adding “we are not affiliated with [Brand]” is better than nothing, but courts treat disclaimers with skepticism. To have any real effect, a disclaimer needs to be prominent, clearly worded, and placed next to the potentially confusing use, not buried in footer text. Courts have repeatedly found that vague or poorly positioned disclaimers fail to prevent confusion, and the burden falls on the person using the mark to prove the disclaimer actually works.
A disclaimer can help in a close case where the rest of the use is borderline fair. It will not rescue a presentation that already looks like an endorsement. If the only reason you need a disclaimer is that your use of the logo reads as sponsorship, redesign the presentation instead of relying on small print to undo the confusion.
What It Costs If You Get It Wrong
The consequences start well before a courtroom. Most trademark owners open with a cease and desist letter demanding that you stop using the mark. The USPTO tells recipients to treat any such letter seriously, even though receiving one does not mean you have been sued yet.11United States Patent and Trademark Office. I Received a Letter/Email Ignoring the letter usually speeds up the timeline toward litigation.
Injunctions
The first thing a trademark owner typically seeks in court is an injunction ordering you to stop using the logo. Federal courts can issue both preliminary and permanent injunctions to prevent trademark violations, and a plaintiff who proves infringement is entitled to a rebuttable presumption that ongoing use causes irreparable harm. In counterfeit cases, courts can even order the seizure of infringing goods and the tools used to produce them on an emergency basis, without prior notice.12Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 U.S. Code 1116 – Injunctive Relief
Monetary Damages
Financial liability comes in several forms. The trademark owner can recover its actual lost profits, your profits from the infringing activity, and litigation costs. Courts measure lost profits by comparing where the plaintiff would be financially if the infringement had never happened against where it actually ended up. The owner may also recover what it spent on corrective advertising.
When counterfeit marks are involved, the plaintiff can skip proving actual damages and elect statutory damages: $1,000 to $200,000 per counterfeit mark per type of goods or services for non-willful infringement, or up to $2,000,000 per mark if willful. For willful use of a counterfeit mark, courts are also required to award treble damages, meaning three times profits or actual damages, whichever is greater, along with attorney’s fees, unless extenuating circumstances exist. Even outside counterfeit cases, a court can award attorney’s fees to the prevailing party when the case is “exceptional,” which usually means the infringer acted in bad faith.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 U.S. Code 1117 – Recovery for Violation of Rights
Getting a License When Fair Use Doesn’t Fit
If your intended use does not fit cleanly into any fair use category, the safest path is a license. Start by identifying the company’s legal or brand management team. Most large companies have a dedicated licensing group or at least published brand guidelines explaining how to request permission. Expect one to three months, and start before you commit resources to a project that depends on approval.
A trademark license should address several core terms:
- Scope of use: which logo formats you can use, on which products or materials, and in which geographic areas.
- Duration: how long the license lasts and whether it renews automatically.
- Quality control: the owner will almost certainly require approval rights over how the logo appears, because trademark law requires licensors to maintain quality standards to preserve the mark’s validity.
- Compensation: a flat fee, a royalty (commonly 5% to 15% depending on brand strength and industry), or a combination.
- Termination: what happens if either side wants out, including any sell-off period for existing inventory and post-termination obligations.
Get the agreement in writing. An oral understanding is nearly impossible to enforce, and informal permission from a marketing contact can evaporate when a legal department reviews the situation later. A signed agreement is what protects you.