Legal Question in Intellectual Property in South Carolina

Because you mention that you paid $$ and the designer did work, I'm assuming that you had some sort of agreement even if there was no "written contract." But for purposes of the Copyright Act, and the question of who owns the copyright in the design, the "work made for hire" definition (17 U.S.C. � 101) requires that, if it was not your employee, the work of authorship must have been "specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire." But since this pertains to a patent, I suspect that the designer has little use for the design, other than to try to extract payment from you.

So I suggest that you collect all documentation of your dealings with the designer (e-mail communications, receipts, notes describing what a payment was for) and consult with a local attorney to see what legal theories might be most useful in obtaining the best outcome.