Art Print Appreciation

If the words “work for hire” appear on the purchase order, they do own them.

Depends on the circumstances of your project. Did you work on sight for the client, aka, work for hire? If you actually worked remotely in your own studio, freelance, you own the artwork. Since there is no contract or mutual nondisclosure agreement (I’m assuming this since there is no contract), she isn’t the creator of the intellectual property, you are an for NOW, are the owner of the property.

But there is something going on in congress that may change that for all creative industries, so heads up:

The Orphan Works Act of 2008 will endanger the rights of anyone who creates intellectual property.

It will expose your art to commercial infringement. It will include work from professional paintings to family snapshots. It will include published and unpublished work. It will include any image that resides or has ever resided on the internet. It will force you to register every picture you do with privately-held commercial registries. It will make all unregistered works potential orphans.

This radical change to U.S. copyright law will shift the burden of diligence from infringers to rights holders. It is wrong to give infringers the right to make money from your property without your knowledge or consent. You should not have to pay businessmen to keep the work you’ve created.

The Orphan Works Act is an assault on national and international copyright laws. It’s an assault on the property and privacy rights embodied in them.

Illustrators, photographers, fine artists: let’s come together and act to keep Congress from orphaning our work.

This event will be webcast live.
Panelists at this forum will include:

- Brad Holland Hall of Fame artist who has testified against the Orphan Works Act of 2006 in both the House and Senate
- Cynthia Turner Award-winning medical artist who has collaborated in written testimony to both the House and Senate
- Constance Evans Photographer, painter and Executive Director of Advertising Photographers of America
- Terry Brown Director Emeritus of the Society of Illustrators, currently Director of the American Society of Illustrators Partnership
- Others to be announced

To learn more about the Orphan Works Bill, listen to the interview with Brad Holland:

mp3 version:
YouTube version:

For additional background on Orphan Works, go to the IPA Orphan Works Resource Page for Artists

If there was no contract, at the moment you are probably protected by copyright law. But you may need to hire a lawyer.

This should be a good lesson though, NEVER do work for hire without a contract that really spells out the terms, and NEVER give up your rights unless there’s a very very good reason to do so. (If I did a job, and the person said they want to BUY the rights from me, then I would sit down a do a very long negotiation to make sure I got paid really well for selling those rights. Look into industry standards for value on the work, and value on each use. In effect, it would be like calculating royalties in advance. If the company REALLY thinks they can make a lot of money off your design, then you should negotiate with that in mind. But I would not easily give up my rights that way.)

Good luck!

Usually you should send files that are not editable so that clients can’t move anything you design around. They can only view it. If there was no contract signed then the rights belong to the creator which is you. She doesn’t own it. And next time try to create a contract. Artists and people in the creative field always get scammed. Try researching intellectual property.