Copyright
The copyright law is the easiest and least expensive way to protect our work as artists. According to a law that became effective in 1978, an artistic work receives a copyright at the moment an original copyrightable work is created in a fixed form. So, every working artist has some right to start with. This may sound too simple, and it can be. If an artist (or his representative/agent) is unaware of these rights and take necessary steps to exercise these rights, they can be lost inadvertently.
The copyright laws provide the copyright owner with a number of rights. Those rights are defined as the following rights:
1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies, records, tapes, CDs, etc.;
2) to prepare derivative works based on the copyrighted work;
3) to distribute copies of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by lease, rental, or lending;
4) to perform the copyrighted work publicly (in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, choreographic, pantomime, film, performance, and other audiovisual works); and
5) to display the copyrighted work publicly (in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, choreographic, pantomime, film, performance, pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work, including the individual images of a motion picture).
A broad range of creative works can be protected under the copyright law. The following are included in the category of copyrightable works of art:
1) literary works;
2) musical works, including accompanying works;
3) dramatic works, including any accompanying music;
4) pantomime and choreographic works;
5) pictorial, graphic and sculptural works;
6) motion pictures and other audiovisual works; and
7) sound recordings.
These categories apply to works of paintings and sculptures as well as greeting cards and manufactured statuettes.
This gives us substantial rights to our work, how it may be reproduced, how it is distributed, how it may be displayed and so on. But our rights as artists has limits, as well. A copyright only prohibits another from actually copying the identical or substantially similar work. For instance, if an artist in Chicago makes a painting, and a second artist in Dallas creates an identical or similar painting without seeing the Chicago painting, the Chicago artist has no rights against the Dallas artist. Even if the Dallas painter has access to the Chicago painter's work, there is infringement only if the second painting was copied and "substantially similar" to the first.
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