Corporate logos, or anything containing a corporate logo are often copyrighted and very strongly protected by their rightful owners.
25 years ago, one larger regional bank I was working at on a contract circulated a memo indicating that their corporate logo is not to be reproduced in any form without consultation and permission by their legal people. This was an internal memo directed at employees who were printing the corporate logo on some of the computer reports. Note that this was in early laser printing days, and it was completely impossible to exactly replicate their logo using an impact printer. Even with their mainframe laser printers, the logo was not to be printed.
About the same time, various railroads contacted model railroad equipment manufacturers and demanded an agreement and payment (of course) for the rights to reproduce their logos on model railroad equipment. The right to a 'gain' (profit) from using their logos was aggressively being protected.
Spin forward to last September. I took some photographs using my camera at my place of employment while technically on my break. However, as I was on company property and in the company vehicle, I contacted management and which led me to their legal department regarding ownership rights. Big corporations move slowly, but after about 2 weeks, they came back and said they loved the photos, but could not permit some of the pictures to be distributed due to the corporate logo of some of our customers prominently displayed on their equipment. They went on to explain that some companies are 'very touchy' about their logo being used without their permission, and, of course, that was what was in several of my shots.
While some may consider 'ignorance is bliss' or it's easier to get forgiveness than permission, selling your photos that contain trademarked logos and perhaps other trademarked images (the Santa Claus drinking a Coca-Cola comes to mind) -may- result in a knock at your door, or, more likely, a cease-and-desist court order, in my estimation.
HOWEVER... I also consider the countless 1000s of pictures taken in downtown New York City, especially at Times Square. Numerous company advertisements are visible in nearly every photo taken there in the past 100+ years. I am unaware of any legal hassles those photographers may have had...probably none. But if, perchance, one were to photograph the giant Coca-Cola sign cropped fairly tightly and start selling prints of that photograph, I'd expect a certified letter and/or cease-and-desist letter sometime soon.
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