Your Art, Your Right, Your Business

Registering Your Signature to Watermark Your Artwork

Last week I was asked an interesting question by a talented young graphic designer entrepreneur - Chan. Chan’s work is very impressive – he places a lot of emphasis on culture in his artwork. There’s so much inspiration to draw from our culture and Chan does a good job of it. So, it’s not surprising that he wants to follow the correct process to protect what is a critical part of his business. 

Chan raised an interesting intellectual property related question on his LinkedIn page and a friend referred him to me. 

Before we get to the question, here’s a little bit of background to understand the context of Chan’s question. 

Chan is a graphic designer and digital artist. While he realizes the importance of protecting his intellectual property, he wasn’t exactly sure how to go about it. A friend told him that his work is automatically protected on creation under the country’s copyright laws but he wanted further confirmation from IP Professionals (like Vai IP :] ). 

At present, he signs all his artwork with a standard signature which I assumed to be his way of informing the public that it is his work and according to him would offer some protection from possible infringement.

Chan posed this interesting question – is there any way I can register that signature so that any artwork that bears the signature is protected?

My response

1. Chan’s friend is correct in stating that copyright protection (of eligible works) under Papua New Guinea’s Copyright legislation is automatic.
2. Provided that Chan’s artwork is his own original creation, the artwork would be eligible for copyright protection under PNG’s copyright law and protection would be automatic the moment he creates them.
3. Accordingly, there is no need to formally follow a process to protect eligible works under PNG's current copyright laws because quite simply, no such process exists.
4. Whether Chan should register his signature as a trade mark is entirely up to him but under the circumstances explained to me and its proposed purpose, it would be unnecessary and will not offer any protection other than the signature itself. It matters little what that trademark is applied on. In other words, Chan’s registration of his signature as a trade mark would offer him exclusive rights to use the signature but extend that protection to artwork that signature is watermarked on. For reasons given in item 1 and 2 above, the artwork is already protected under copyright law. This brings us to an important principle.
5. Each of the intellectual property categories (in this case copyright and trade marks) have, essentially, separate rights. The rights granted through trade mark registration, for instance, are limited to the registered trade mark alone. Generally speaking, you cannot sue a third party for copyright infringement on the basis that the artwork in question had a registered trademark on it (i.e. his signature).

One of the things I try to do when advising clients is to be commercially sound. That is to not only advise clients on what the law is but how that law can be applied to the client’s business in a practical sense. Understanding the client’s business is often one of the challenges I get to face given the different types of businesses and industries we are tasked to advise.

Chan suggested to me that one of the reasons why he took a greater interest in IP protection was the possibility of expanding his services to merchandising and selling his prints. This is a great initiative and I wish Chan the best because his artwork is, to use the local slang – "Kaks"!

I suggested he assess thoroughly his intellectual property assets and consider licensing his IP rights in a more strategic way to further monetize from the rights he holds or has the potential to hold. I will discuss more generally these rights and IP licensing, in the hope that it can help other local talented SME’s monetize from their intellectual property, their innovative and creative ideas. 

Even small businesses have intellectual property they can monetize from.

Mea Vai

P.S Check out some of Chan's work here https://www.facebook.com/Shawk23/

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