As a general rule the creator of the work (artist) is the initial owner of the copyrights of the work. Owning your rights is a powerful and lucrative tool for future revenue. The original painting can be sold, but the rights are retained by the artist to sell, and license, and use again and again for whatever the cause for as long as the artists’ life, and by law these rights are passed on to heirs after death. But, there are two exceptions to the general rule; one is if you are an employee the employer retains all the rights to works prepared within the scope of the job unless agreed otherwise, and second commissioned works where the person commissioning requests the work be created under a “work for hire” agreement.
Read the fine print in contracts, and do your homework. What does the clause work for hire mean to you, and to your future as an artist? The law allows that exclusive rights in a work can be divided as well as subdivided, consequently each can be separately owned, exercised, transferred, and enforced. As owner of these rights you can sell one kind of right to one person, and another to someone else. Rights are valuable.
The work for hire clause or relinquishing all rights to a work is the reason you will not see any images of mine used on a number of very popular annual posters, or entered into some very well-known national contests.  Many well-known organizations insert wording into the fine print of the application, and end up owning all rights to an image that the artist submitted for a one-time use. For an organization to ask for all rights to a work or use the work for hire clause in a contract to gain all rights places an unnecessary hardship on the artist. Beware, and read the fine print! If additional uses of a specific work are needed they can be granted and defined by use of an agreement, subject to a use fee. If an organization absolutely must own all rights to a work, they had best be prepared to pay a huge sum equal to the many unknown uses for a work throughout the life of the artist and his/her heirs.
There is so much for an artist to know and understand about copyright and ownership of rights that I will address different issues as I understand them from time to time in future posts on this blog.
Gail Niebrugge, the Business of Art
