⏰ Do Now — Start Here
Have you ever noticed the little (R) or (TM) symbol next to a brand name? What do you think it actually does?
🎯 Today's Big Question
- What do professional designers need to know about copyright, trademarks, and image licensing that goes beyond the basics?
📈 By the End of Today, You Will Be Able To
- Define trademark, public domain, royalty-free, and rights-managed licensing.
- Distinguish stock photography licensing tiers and when each is appropriate.
- Explain when a model release is legally required.
🧰 What You'll Need
- Printed licensing-tier comparison chart
- Case-study scenario cards (mix of trademark/licensing/model-release situations)
📋 Your Plan for Today
Day 1: Licensing Tiers
- Do Now (5 min).
- Mini-lesson (18 min): trademark vs. copyright, public domain, and the difference between royalty-free and rights-managed licensing, using the comparison chart.
- Guided practice (12 min): as a class, work through 2 scenario cards together.
- Independent start (10 min): begin working through remaining cards in groups.
Day 2: Case Studies
- Do Now (5 min): what's the difference between royalty-free and rights-managed? Case-study stations (25 min): in groups, work through the remaining scenario cards, deciding what license or permission each situation requires.
- Whole-class review (10 min): review the trickiest cards.
- Written quiz (5 min): 4 questions on the new vocabulary.
📚 Key Words
- Trademark
- A legally registered symbol, word, or phrase that represents a specific company or product.
- Public Domain
- Creative work no longer (or never) protected by copyright, free for anyone to use.
- Royalty-Free
- A license allowing repeated use after a one-time fee, under the license's terms.
- Rights-Managed
- A license that restricts use to specific, negotiated terms (e.g. one campaign, one region, one year).
- Model Release
- A signed legal document giving permission to use a photographed person's likeness commercially.
✅ What Your Finished Work Should Include
Case-study answers checked against an answer key; a 4-question written quiz on the new vocabulary.
Exit Ticket: Explain the difference between royalty-free and rights-managed licensing in your own words.
📊 Before You Leave
Quick, anonymous class check-in -- takes less than a minute.
🎓 ACP Exam Prep
This lesson connects to the Photoshop Adobe Certified Professional exam: Domain 1: Working in the Design Industry
🔗 Want to Learn More?
🚀 The Extra Mile
Cross-Class Connection: The same intellectual-property concepts a Business or Economics class covers under contracts and ownership.
Career Connection: Licensing mistakes are a real legal risk in every professional career on this site — this lesson is the adult version of that protection.
Go further -- turn this into a portfolio piece:
- Write a simple licensing agreement (a real template) for how you'd let someone use one of your own designs. Start here: decide the three basics first — can it be resold, does the buyer credit you, is it exclusive — before you draft any legal-sounding language.
- Research one real copyright dispute in the design world and present it as a one-page case-study poster. Start here: pick a dispute you can find actual primary sources for (news coverage, court filings), not one you only vaguely remember hearing about.