In the online art fora (yes, I once learned Latin) I often see questions about selling artwork and what the artist’s rights are. Sometimes this is a case of the blind leading the blind – there is much guess work and misinformation.

Commercial use of your artwork
I’m not an attorney, but did study U.S. copyright law in order to protect my art instruction book Art Head Start. I also needed to license the use of some example pictures for my book from other digital artists.

First, there is nothing unusual about selling artwork or about a buyer asking for certain rights – obviously commercial artists do this every day. As an artist, you can approach this in two ways:
1. You can hire an Intellectual Property (IP) attorney.
2. And/or you can learn to do it yourself.

If you choose to handle you own copyright, my first advice is not to believe any second-hand information about copyright you get in a forum or discussion group. Instead, go straight to the U.S. Copyright Office or the equivalent for your country. For the U.S., use their “Copyright Basics” link.

You can do a Google search to find a downloadable “artist’s contract”, edit it and use that as the basis of your art sales deal. Better yet – there is a company called “Nolo Press” that specializes in do-it-yourself legal books and contracts and they have an outstanding reputation. Check out their home page “Patents, Copyright & Art” > “License art, music or inventions” section.

Such an ‘Artist’s Contract” or ‘Art License” will stipulate that you are selling a “non-exclusive right” to use your art in specific x, y, z ways – you are not selling the copyright or ownership. “Non-exclusive” means you can also sell that right (or other rights) to other buyers.

If your prospect wants exclusive rights, charge a lot more. This is less common, but prospects can have legitimate reasons to want more control of the image. For example, a prospect may want to use your image as their business logo, and want protection against other copies getting into the marketplace and affecting their brand.

So, you don’t normally sell the ownership of your art work for commercial art purposes – you sell a one-time use of your artwork. What you are selling is a limited license to use your art, in the same way that when you buy a copy of the Windows operating system you do not own Windows – you own a limited, non-exclusive license to use Windows, under stipulated circumstances.

Selling Fine Art Originals
This is a different situation, where for example, you are selling all the rights to an original (like an oil painting) to an art collector – who is basically investing in your reputation. Obviously this sale is worth a lot more than a single use license. However, I don’t know much about the legal aspects of this type of sale – so I’ll leave you to the tender mercies of Google Search until I learn more…

Hope this helped…
       _Jim coe