Understanding Illustration Copyright and Licensing

I often find that there’s confusion and misunderstanding surrounding what type of ownership or licence a client needs for their illustration commission and what the different terms actually mean. Here I hope to try to de-mystify the terminology and help you understand what you need for your project.

The advice in this article is based on my own understanding of UK law – please seek your own legal advice if you’re in a different country or in a specific situation that you need advice on. In this article I’m also specifically referring to the licensing of illustration, rather than logo or general graphic design work. My illustration tends to be digital, there may be other considerations for ownership of original hand-drawn illustration work.

Illustration of a copyright symbol being reproduced with a pantograph — *Illustration © Tom Holmes*

What is copyright and who owns it?

In the UK, the creator of any original illustration work automatically owns the copyright. There’s no need to register it or label it as such, and it protects the creator from having their work copied, distributed, displayed or adapted without their permission.

The ‘idea’ itself can’t be copyrighted, neither can a specific style (although it’s bad etiquette to directly imitate another illustrator’s style).

You can read the UK Government guide to copyright here.

As a client, I’ve paid for the work, surely I own the copyright?

No – unless you’ve signed a specific transfer agreement, the creator owns the copyright, not you.

An exception is if the illustrator is your employee, rather than being hired on a freelance basis, then the employer would own the copyright.

Why does it matter?

Owning full copyright is far more valuable to the client as it means that they can use the illustration wherever and whenever they like, manipulate it, sell items featuring it and sell or licence it to a third party. It would also prevent the creator from using their own illustration without permission.

I like to compare this to the music industry – if you paid to use a song in an advert, that wouldn’t automatically mean that you now owned the full rights to the song and could sell CDs, make money from it every time it was played or performed or stop the original artist from being able to perform it.

Because this level of ownership is more valuable to the client, it’s fair that the client should pay a lot more for it, regardless of how long the work took to create. Unless you have a good reason to require full ownership of the copyright, then you likely just need a licence, tailored to your requirements. Knowing this could actually save you money!

There have only been a handful of times where I’ve actually needed to sell full ownership of copyright to the client for an illustration, and some of those times it probably wasn’t really necessary, but the client insisted upon it.

How licensing an illustration works

What is a licence?

A licence is a set of terms specifying the permissions a client has to use the illustration. Typically this will include:

The end user’s name
What it is to be used for
The areas it can be used in
The duration it can be used for
Exclusivity of the licence
Any other terms specific to the use of the illustration

Once agreed, the client will usually sign this, however if they ignore it and commence with the job then it is still technically legally binding unless the client has specifically objects to any of its terms.

To make things simpler, I tend to use a ‘default’ licence for most jobs, but will make a custom licence where required.

What about selling items featuring the illustration? Do I need copyright ownership to be able to do that?

Though it will likely cost you a bit more, or might include payment of royalties per sale, this can be agreed and written into a licence. Just make sure that you discuss these needs before a project begins and then the terms can be agreed and added.

Other terms and conditions

The licence will also usually be accompanied by a set of terms and conditions. These are likely to be standard terms applicable to all clients and will cover the following:

Payment terms – how much will be paid, and by when
Cancellation – what happens if the job is cancelled
Changes to the artwork – agreements about client requests for changes, or the client changing artwork themselves
Warranties – declarations that the artwork doesn’t infringe on someone else’s copyright
Credits and moral rights – the illustrator’s right to be identified as the creator

Illustration of speech bubbles discussing copyright and licensing — *Illustration © Tom Holmes*

Make sure you discuss these things!

The important thing here for both parties is that all these details are discussed at the start of a project, before any work begins. It’s not safe to just make assumptions over who has the ownership and what rights they have to use the illustration in different ways.

Being bombarded with a load of legal demands can seem a bit daunting if you’re not familiar with the process of commissioning illustration work, but it’s all standard stuff that’s there to protect everyone involved. By having everything agreed in writing from the start, it ensures that there are no misunderstandings or disputes at a later stage.

Summary

Hopefully you now have a better understanding of what copyright actually means and what type of licence you might require for your job. Please get in touch with me if you if you have an illustration project in mind.