Strength of agreement needed for commissioned art

However the agreement is arrived at, email or snail mail, it should include all the uses to which you and the artist agree to. With most artist I know, they own the work, but grant you certain rights. The more rights you request, the more the work is going to cost, generally...

For you, the rights of usage should include,

Use of art for print and electronic versions.
U.S editions as well as international editions.
Any advertising usage, such as web pages, blogs, business cards, etc.

Anything else you and the artist agree upon. Remember, the agreement protects both parties...

This might work better in our Art And Design room. I'll move it there but if the room mod thinks it's not appropriate, she might well bounce it back to Self Publishing.

A written agreement over email could secure you certain non-exclusive rights, but if you want actual rights to using the image in anyway, including deriving from it for marketing purposes or adding text to it for a cover, you should secure a contract and make some sort of payment in order to create an additional paper trail.



As is the case with any intellectual property, you need to purchase rights from the copyright holder. Unless the rights have already been sold, you'll be purchasing them from the artist who created the piece.

You will either be buying exclusive rights or non-exclusive rights. Exclusive means you are the only owner of the rights purchased, and non-exclusive means that others will be sharing those rights with you. The use of stock images from mega stock websites (something I don't use unless requested by the client) is sold en masse under non-exclusive rights. If you're working with an artist, and the individual is only offering non-exclusive rights to you, you may want to inquire about who else is or might be purchasing these rights as well.

Something many new freelance graphic designers miss doing is providing information about the copyright of stock to their clients, which puts the client at risk since mass distributed stock can be suspect of origin and is released under a non-exclusive contract that needs to be kept in your records. If there is a real person's face in the image that you are purchasing, you will want a copy of the model release form, because the creator of a photo of a person is both the photographer and the model. Their are also privacy issues in play for that one.

You'll probably be going the exclusive route when working with a commissioned artist. You'll need to decide what rights you'll specifically be purchasing. And the price of the work will probably differ based on what rights are for sale.

In the US, the rights that are up for negotiation are listed in Sec. 106 of the US Copyright Act of 1976.

Sect. 106. Exclusive rights in copyrighted works

Subject to sections 107 through 120 [17 USCS Sects. 107-120], the owner of copyright under this title [17 USCS Sects. 101 et seq.] has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:

(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;

(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;

(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;

(4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly; and

(5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly.

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Here are the clauses I use to negotiate the terms of rights. They are nothing more than a ground work.

REPRODUCTION OF WORK:**
*___ The client assumes full reproduction rights upon payment for completed project.*Where applicable the designer will be given any necessary credit for usage of the project elements under the name "_______________". (For this project, that means a listing in the credits page of any print or digital copy of the book that uses the image.)

*___ The designer retains personal rights to use the completed project and any preliminary designs for the purpose of design competitions, future publications on design, educational purposes and the marketing of the designer's business. Where applicable the client will be given any necessary credit for usage of the project elements.*
*

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