Terms of Service lay out the rules for using a website and those rules aren’t always in your favor. Maybe, instead, you should be asking...
How Important Is Reading the Terms of Service?
You’re considering a lot of different things when thinking about inking a new tattoo, but copyright infringement probably isn’t one of them. But copyright laws come into play in various ways when tattooing new work – whether you’re the artist whose designs are being inked, the tattoo artists drawing your own work, or an artist merely using the influence and inspiration of tattoo art...
Every business needs a contract at one time or another. They are everywhere. Whether you are a struggling artist, world-renowned photographer, or a gallery owner, you will be inundated with contracts from art dealers, agents, exhibitors, publishers, ad agencies, museums as well as non-art industry members like landlords and contractors. If a contract is supposed to make sure that both parties...
If the owner of a copyrighted work cannot be found, can I use it? It may be possible if you analyze the orphan work properly.
Fashion designers face a unique set of challenges in protecting their intellectual property, but new court decisions are providing further guidance for fashion designers and legal practitioners.
Whenever an artist or writer portrays a living person in an unflattering light, they are likely to receive a letter or angry phone call saying things like “I am going to sue you for defamation” or “you’ll be hearing from my lawyer,” along with plethora of swear words. It sounds pretty serious and scary, but the reality is that it is usually just bluster; defamation suits are not that easy to win...
As a general rule, when an artistic or literary work is created, the author is the one that holds the copyright. Nobody can copy, distribute, or display the work without the author’s permission. When a painting is sold, the buyer owns the painting itself, but does not have the right to use that image for anything else other than to hang it. But what happens if the artist was hired specifically...
Artists and collectors can minimize estate taxes on artworks by employing a planning strategy and understanding the complexities involved with assessing the work's fair market value.
It is a common misperception that you cannot copyright a building design. That is probably because, before 1990, there wasn’t much protection for building designs. At that time, anyone could reproduce buildings that looked identical to those created by others, as long as they didn’t actually use copied drawings to build them. With the passage of the Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act in...
Picking a name for a business or product is one of the first steps for any new venture. However, many companies don’t register their trademarks during the start-up phase, usually waiting until a later time when sufficient cash is available if registered at all. That decision is a bit of a gamble. In reality, businesses should prioritize trademark registration for their brands or company...
What are the challenges for collectors in authenticating artworks? What are the legal remedies when a purchased artwork is discovered to be an art forgery?