Sell the Copyright?
Posted in Presentism on 25. Feb, 2009
Selling copyright? Theoretically, all of her life’s work will belong to someone else if she doesn’t keep up repayments so it’s not quite the same as selling, but collateral is by definition a valued asset, possibly to be sold at auction.
With museum’s selling art or closing down or cutting back being very much in the news, how long before some enterprising museum will sell the copyright to an object/artwork but not the object itself? Part of the deal could be an indefinite license to use the copyright. The object isn’t sold, it stays in the museum. I imagine stricter anti-photography measures will be brought in though.
A company then could use a piece of art for their company logo or cover their product with the image etc.
I say it’s a matter of time.
Isn’t if fairly rare for a museum to own the copyright on art in their collections?Unless a contract was written specifically transferring copyright at the time of sale, it remains the property of the creator. And of course anything created before 1923 (in the US anyway) has no copyright. I would be willing to wager that less than 1% of the objects in most museums have copyrights owned by the museum.
This is where my knowledge of copyright is less than complete, but copyright is passed onto an estate as an asset in the event of an artists death, right? I imagine there must have been a few without family or children. What happens then? Also, there must be art that comes from bequests, and that would take copyright with it.
Maybe I should have called it all the “intangible assets” of art. Considering how art and design can merge nowadays, what about trademark? Hey, how about merchandising rights? I’m sure there’s a way to make this work within intellectual property laws.
This post isn’t me saying it should happen. This is more a prediction that someone will try it.