Legal Advice for Artists: Understanding Copyrights, Contracts and IP Rights
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Understanding The Legal Side Of Being An Artist
As an artist, understanding your rights is crucial. Though your focus might be on creating and selling your work, you should also be asking yourself how you can protect your work. This is where our legal advice for artists comes into the picture.
Unfortunately, artists often run into issues as they have historically had fewer legal protections. In America, economic rights are favoured over the personal rights of artists. If you want to avoid being taken advantage of and having your art stolen, it’s important to understand how copyrights work and what you can do to protect your art.
Legal Advice For Artists: Understanding Copyrights and IP
Copyright law for artists falls within a larger body of legislation known as intellectual property (IP). IP essentially refers to any creation of the human mind. However, simply thinking of an idea doesn’t make it intellectual property.
For a work to be copyrighted, it must be original and it must have a fixed, tangible form, meaning it’s expressed in some form of media, such as on paper, canvas, phonorecords, or digital coding. Examples can include books, paintings, music, sculptures, photographs, illustrations, films, and sound recordings.
It’s important to understand that the moment your original art becomes a fixed and tangible medium, it’s protected under copyright. As a copyright owner, you then have the right to sell, distribute, adapt, and publicly display your art.
Though you aren’t legally required to do anything to copyright your work, it’s often considered wise to do so. If a situation ever arises where you need to prove that your work is yours and that it’s copyrighted, it helps if your work is officially registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.
Tips to Keep Your Work Legally Protected As an Artist
There are a few different things you can do as an artist to protect your work. Even if your art is already considered copyrighted because it’s original and in a fixed form, it’s still smart to take proactive measures to avoid any legal issues, such as copyright infringement. The following legal advice for artists should set out a few basic things to keep in mind.
1. Contracts
When entering into a situation where you are providing artwork to a client, an organisation, or a gallery, you should write up a contract to ensure there are no misunderstandings. Contracts are legally binding and can help specify terms and conditions as well as expected outcomes when entering into an arrangement concerning your artwork.
When creating a contract, these are the primary items that the document should include:
– Each party’s name, email, phone number, and address;
– An explanation of the project and terms, such as whether it’s a commissioned piece, who is responsible for shipping, who pays for damages, and who determines pricing (if the piece is being sold in a gallery);
– The timeline for when the art or project is to be completed by;
– Cost and payment terms;
– A section about retaining copyrights for your work;
– Cancellation terms.
The more details you include in a contract, the better. This will ensure all of your bases are covered in case there are any issues, such as disagreements about the terms.
2. Licensing and Registration
It’s also important to officially license or register your art, even if it’s already protected under copyright. Having an official record of the registration of your work can go a long way toward protecting the piece and avoiding any legal issues.
To register your work, simply visit the U.S. Copyright Office website and create a login with their registration system. There, you will be directed to the appropriate form depending on your work.
If you’re only registering one work, you can use the standard application. If you have multiple works to register, you will need to use the group registration application.
3. Records Management and Bookkeeping
Bookkeeping and record management also play important roles in protecting your work. You need to have emails, documents, certificates, or other kinds of paperwork and digital files to help prove that you are, in fact, the original owner and that your work is copyrighted.
There are numerous consequences of bad bookkeeping when you are running your own business as an artist. You could run into financial issues if you have missing or incorrect expense records. You could run into tax compliance problems if you aren’t keeping track of your artwork income records. And, of course, you could also have trouble proving that you are the official copyright owner if there is no documentation to prove such.
A good piece of advice to avoid any of these issues is to either hire someone to do your bookkeeping for you or invest in a quality records management system. Some examples include paper-based systems, electronic systems, cloud-based systems, hybrid systems, and automated systems. Even keeping a simple art inventory can be useful.
It’s also important to make sure you keep records of your artist invoices. This will ensure that there’s no confusion when being paid for your work, something that a lot of creatives have had problems with in the past.
A cloud-based or automated system is often best, as they streamline the record-keeping process and are often more secure. However, it doesn’t hurt to keep backups of your records in other places, such as having digital copies as well as physical copies, just in case.
4. Watermarks and Copyright Symbols
As we live in a digital-centric society, many artists gain a following and share their work by posting it online. While this is an important part of building your brand and ensuring people can find and view your work, it also leaves your art more susceptible to being stolen.
This is not to say that you shouldn’t put your work online, but if you do, there are some extra steps you should take to ensure it’s protected. To start, you can add watermarks to the images of your work to make it harder for people to steal or copy them. As a bonus, watermarks can help your branding efforts, particularly if you use your name or your social media handle in the watermark.
You can also add a copyright symbol as well as the date of creation to further protect your art. These steps can also help leave a paper trail and make it easier to take action if your art does get stolen.
Legal Advice for Artists: Summary
If you do happen to run into a copyright issue with your work, you may want to consult a lawyer. If you don’t have definitive proof of ownership, you might need the help of a professional who works in copyright law and can help you gather the information you need to protect yourself.
Understandably, legal representation can seem out of reach if you’re worried about the cost of hiring a lawyer. That said, there are legal resources available to help artists who don’t have the funds for expensive legal services. For instance, Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts is a non-profit organisation that offers free legal advice and services for artists across the country. You can check out their website for a list of the various states where they operate.
If you’re proactive about protecting yourself and your work, however, then legal assistance likely won’t be needed. Make sure to officially register your work and create thorough and well-detailed contracts whenever working on projects with clients.
The content of this article is advisory in nature; for comprehensive legal assistance, please consult a qualified professional.
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How To Write and Use an Artist Contract in 5 Simple Steps
How to Write a Great Professional Artist Invoice The Right Way
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