10 Articles on Protecting Your Art & Copyrights

Here are some articles to help you get started if you want to learn more about registering a copyright and protecting your art.

Legal Tips for the Starving Artist

How to Register You Copyrights Digitally

The 10 Key Points That Must Be In Every Licensing Agreement

Protecting Your Designs with Watermark Tools

Photoshop Tip: How to create a customized signature brush

Protecting Your Art: Interview with Alyson B. Stanfield

How to protect your assets in a licensing agreement

Fear of Getting Your Art Stolen? Look at the Numbers

Artist Protects Copyright Through Twitter

Art Licensing: Key Legal Terms




Free Booklets from the Copyright Office

PDF Copyright BasicsPDF Registering a Copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office
PDF Make Sure Your Application Will Be Acceptable
PDF Cartoons and Comic Strips
PDF Have a Question About Copyright Registration?
PDF Make Sure Your Application Will Be Acceptable
PDF Publications on Copyright
PDF Copyright Notice



Legal Books for Artists:


Legal Guide for the Visual Artist, Fifth Edition



Copyright Law for Artists, Photographers and Designers (Essential Guides)


The Copyright Handbook: What Every Writer Needs to Know


Ebooks by Kate Harper

You can support this blog by ordering Kate's e-Booklets starting at only .99 cents! They can be read on your kindle, ipad, ipod, cellphone, or your computer. Free samples and lending options available. You can also view the list of all recommended greeting card books by a variety of authors.

  


Get Your Greeting Cards into Stores explains how to sell cards nationwide. Included are detailed guidelines on: How to price cards for a profit, get professional feedback, find sales representatives and follow industry standards. Information is also applicable to gift items, magnets, journals, calendars, collectibles, etc.







20 Steps to Art Licensing is a book about how to license your art to companies that publish greeting cards, or manufacture coffee mugs, magnets, wall hangings, kitchen items, and dozens of other gift items. Learn how to prepare your art, what companies to contact, how to find agents, and what trade shows to attend. Includes extensive resources on social media, copyrights, licensing community groups, and lists of interviews with professional designers.






7 Mistakes Greeting Card Writers is a booklet that explains what to avoid when submitting greeting card verse to publishers. Learn how to create a trendy card that reflects the contemporary world we live in, and how to use your own personal experience to create card verse. Topics include: how to avoid limiting your market, when to use adjectives, not creating card for enemies, write like people talk and a list of why card sentiment submissions are often rejected. You can increase your odds of success by 60% just by doing a few simple things. Includes a list of card publishers and their guidelines, links to writer interviews, and writing exercises for how to create good verse.





Unusual Ways To Market Greeting Cards, and 22 places to get your designs featured is a booklet on how to get your cards noticed in non-traditional ways. Everything from why you should send cards to your dentist, to how to get a special feature in national publication. Great tips for designers who are starting out and want to get their cards into the hands of people beyond friends and family. Special Section: 22 Gift Industry Trade Publications who seek out new greeting card designs and feature artists for free.





How to Make an EBook Cover for Non-Designers is an illustrated book will show you how to make your own e-book cover, even if you are not a designer. It is intended to help the indie writer who is on a budget and wants to publish and sell their own book in online stores such Amazon.com and the Apple ibookstore. Selling your book in these stores will allow readers to purchase your book and read it on multiple devices such as the Kindle, iPad, iPhone and many other electronic devices.

LEGAL TIPS for the STARVING ARTIST


Protecting your art doesn't have to empty your bank account.


When I first started my greeting card business I went to an organization called California Lawyers for the Arts where artists can get legal advice for a small fee and sometimes free. Most states and cities in the U.S. have similar resources.

The organization often has extensive classes on copyrights for $10-$20, e-Learning programs and webinars on copyright. Therefore, you really can't afford NOT to learn how to protect your art.

I met my own attorney, MJ Bogatin, an Arts and Entertainment Attorney through this organization and I have been working with him ever since. The nice thing about copyrights and contracts, is you don't have to actually show up in an attorney's office or live near them. You can just email copies of contracts to them for evaluation and you can also talk over the phone.

I asked him recently "What about artists on a budget? How can they protect their work?" Here are some tips from MJ Bogatin:


COPYRIGHTS ARE NOT EXPENSIVE

I recommend that whenever imagery is going to be published on the internet (or elsewhere) that the artist take the time and trouble to register the Works being published.

This can now be done online for $35 at www.copyright.gov. By releasing a bunch of works in a single publication process, the whole lot of them can be registered for the same $35.


3 KEY BENEFITS OF COPYRIGHT REGISTRATION

1) Proof of the date of your creation of a given Work (as against someone else’s claim that you have infringed on a work of theirs that turns out to have been created after your registration).

2) The right to claim statutory damages instead of being limited to the infringer’s profits, with those damages ranging from $750 minimum to up to $150,000 per act of infringement for Willful Infringement.

3) The right to recover prevailing party attorney’s fees and costs, ONLY if you have registered before the infringement or within 3 months of publication.


WHAT DO YOU DO IF AN ARTIST FINDS AN INFRINGEMENT?

• With such a registration in hand, all I (or the artist) generally has to do is write a “cease and desist letter” informing the infringer of the pre-existing registration.

• Regarding the infringer: I can contact them and leverage the right to pursue the above statutory damages, and right to attorney’s fees into a beneficial settlement.

• I can also make this demand on everyone in the line of commerce who is using the infringing image, so there is pressure brought to bear on the infringer especially when there are licensees.


IT DOESN'T ALWAYS HAVE TO COST MONEY

• I always consider the prospect of taking on claims on a contingency fee basis. Sooner or later, the infringer will have to capitulate or we will get a judgment that we can enforce against any of their assets or asset streams.

• There are infringers from whom we may never be able to collect. However, if there is a third party user that does have extensive financial resources, we can look to recover from them, and leave them to their remedies against the licensor/infringer. Only on rare occasions is a registered copyright holder left high and dry.


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M.J. Bogatin is an arts and entertainment attorney, mediator, and is the current Board Chair of California Lawyers for the Arts. His arts practice encompasses literary, performing, visual and multi-media. He can be contacted Bogatin@bcgattorneys.com

MJ BOGATIN
BOGATIN, CORMAN & GOLD
1330 Broadway, Suite 800
Oakland, CA 94612
(510) 832-5005





Articles on Copyrights

Fear of Getting Your Art Stolen? Look at the Numbers

How to Register You Copyrights Digitally

Artist Protects Copyright Through Twitter

The 10 Key Points That Must Be In Every Licensing Agreement

Protecting Your Designs with Watermark Tools

Photoshop Tip: How to create a customized signature brush

Protecting Your Art: Interview with Alyson B. Stanfield

How to protect your assets in a licensing agreement



Free Booklets from the Copyright Office

PDF Copyright BasicsPDF Registering a Copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office
PDF Make Sure Your Application Will Be Acceptable
PDF Cartoons and Comic Strips
PDF Have a Question About Copyright Registration?
PDF Make Sure Your Application Will Be Acceptable
PDF Publications on Copyright
PDF Copyright Notice



Legal Books for Artists:


Legal Guide for the Visual Artist, Fifth Edition



Copyright Law for Artists, Photographers and Designers (Essential Guides)


The Copyright Handbook: What Every Writer Needs to Know


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What To Do When You See Artwork Being Copied Without Permission

Article Worth Reading. Here is an excerpt. To read complete article go to blog post.-Kate

What To Do When You See Artwork Being Copied Without Permission

Unless one believes that no one has the right to private property, and that you can take and use anything you like that belongs to someone else, there's something obviously wrong here. And the artist who was shown the calendar picked up on it quickly enough.

I don't believe that any major world religion has as a part of its teachings that theft is justified, or that personal property can or should be appropriated by others for their use without the permission of the owner. Thus you might expect members of a church or synagogue or mosque or temple to be even more aware on this subject than people who aren't religious devotees. But as you know, this misappropriation of the property of artists happens all the time.

I think the basic problem is that many people honestly have no idea that they're doing anything wrong, especially if the calendar or decoupaged plaque or card or whatever derivative product isn't being used to make money. And they don't think of art as property. I suspect that's the case with this church group's calendar. Well-meaning people wanted to do something nice for church members, and it probably didn't seem to them that they're hurting anyone. It was probably a lot of fun putting the calender together with artwork that they really like, much like we'd cut pictures out of magazines when we were kids and put them on charts or in scrapbooks or on birthday or holiday cards.


continued.....To read complete article go to blog post.


Articles on Copyrights

Fear of Getting Your Art Stolen? Look at the Numbers

How to Register You Copyrights Digitally

Artist Protects Copyright Through Twitter

The 10 Key Points That Must Be In Every Licensing Agreement

Protecting Your Designs with Watermark Tools

Photoshop Tip: How to create a customized signature brush

Protecting Your Art: Interview with Alyson B. Stanfield

How to protect your assets in a licensing agreement



Free Booklets from the Copyright Office

PDF Copyright Basics
PDF Registering a Copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office
PDF Make Sure Your Application Will Be Acceptable
PDF Cartoons and Comic Strips
PDF Have a Question About Copyright Registration?
PDF Make Sure Your Application Will Be Acceptable
PDF Publications on Copyright
PDF Copyright Notice



Legal Books for Artists:


Legal Guide for the Visual Artist, Fifth Edition



Copyright Law for Artists, Photographers and Designers (Essential Guides)


The Copyright Handbook: What Every Writer Needs to Know


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