ANDY-

To clarify, did the logo first appear as a piece of artwork on a magazine cover or as regular piece of artowrk on all issues of a magazine?

If it was simply a p[articualr month's piece of cover art, the magazine that developed it certainly ownes the copyright in it, but not necessarily the trademark. In fact, if it were not used regularly, and never registered as a trademark by the magazine, then the mag most certainly owns the copyright, but has to trademark rights to the logo.

If that were the case, and the magazine then granted the club the right to use it as a logo, the club has no copyright concerns, because it was given permission, and still owns an exclusive trademark in the logo (actually, more likely a "service mark" but for the sake of this argument, it's fair to use the terms interchangeably).

Interstingly, that would possibly hold true even is the magazine's grant of permission to use the artwork had not been not exclusive.

Nonetheless, the club now has exclusive rights to use the mark to identify origin -- to show that a convention is organized by the club, to show that a magazine is the product of the club, to identify a t-shirt as created by the club. Even the magazine could probably be barred from using the artwork again.

The reasoning here is that while the artist owns his right to his work, he has allowed the club to use that work, and they are now using it as a trademark. The public and the club now BOTH have a right to expet that anything bearing that mark is associated with the club. Furthermore, the club now has a duty to protect the public, by commencing legal action against anyone using the mark without the club's permission.

Getting back to the original question, if the magazine originally used the logo repeatedly to identify the magazine -- the issue is a lot stickier. If the club was being used by two unrelated entities to designate origin, then it may well have lost all meaning, and it might be deemed abandoned by everyone. That owuld depend on how closely the two entites worked together.

Anyway, if this mark was not repeatedly used by the magazine, then it very definitely belongs to the club as a trademark, and they shoudl be working to protect it.