COPYRIGHT LAW ISSUES          

            Knowledge of copyright law is essential for the fine artist to protect his right to exclusively market and profit from his work. Without a copyright, anyone could copy the work and use it for any purpose without payment to the artist. A copyright gives the artist five rights: to reproduce, adapt, publicly distribute copies of, publicly display, and publicly perform the copyrighted work (Karlen, 1). According to Annamary Bierley, a professor at Sinclair Community College, the reproduction rights are of special importance because most artists will find reproducing their work to be more lucrative than the income made in selling the original.

Almost any kind of artistic work can be copyrighted as long as it is a tangible medium. Performance art cannot be protected, but a film, tape, or score of that performance can be copyrighted. The work must be original, and it must be "expressed" in some manner. Ideas cannot be copyrighted but the expression of an idea in an artistic form can be. Once a work of art is finished, it is automatically copyrighted and does not require formal registration until it has been "published", defined as being sold, rented, leased, lent, or publicly distributed (Hoover, 55). It is debatable whether a public exhibition of the work constitutes publishing, according to Bierley.

Once published, a copyright notice must be placed on the work to maintain protection. A proper notice includes three elements, the copyright symbol or alternatively the word Copyright or the abbreviation Copr., the date of first publication, and the name of the artist or an alternative designation under which the artist is known (Karlen, 15). The copyright should then be registered with the US Copyright Office, a branch of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, by filling out an application form and returning it with two slides of the work and a $10 fee (Karlen, 16). The copyright then exists for the artist's lifetime plus an additional fifty years after his death, and then can be renewed for another fifty years by his estate. After the copyright expires, the work falls into what is termed public domain and can then be copied, although to be completely safe, an attorney should be consulted before doing so (Karlen, 25).

Infringement occurs when someone exercises one of the five exclusive copyright rights without the artist's consent. An obvious example would be if the one infringing copied the work exactly, but a gray area exists if the person adapted the work or used only a small portion of it. A court could still decide infringement took place, and according to Bierley, the law is taking a much harder look at this issue now. There have been many interesting lawsuits recently where artists have been successfully prosecuted for partial copying that would have been acceptable a few years ago.

Works Cited