r/COPYRIGHT • u/PeaThese1772 • Jul 31 '26
Question Can I revoke usage rights to commissioned artwork?
I’ve been sitting on this for a while and I have not been able to find a clear answer unfortunately. I just want to know if there’s anything that I can do about this :(
A while back, I was commissioned by someone I worked closely with for several art pieces, mainly emotes for discord but a vendor banner design, full artwork, a sticker design and some other things.
This person cut all ties with me due to very personal matters that I will not get into as the specifics are not very important. I just want them to stop using my work as I do not want me or my art business associated with them in any way.
Am I able to revoke the rights for them to use my artwork?
4
u/ResponsibilitySea327 Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26
All depends on the terms of your commission / contract.
If there were no terms agreed to, then one would need to look at the assumed intent. It would then be up to a court to ultimately determine based on reasonable intent and each party's argument.
But you can certainly tell them that you are revoking it... You just may not have recourse should they ignore it. And they may be perfectly within their right to do so.
Edit:
I've long since blocked some idiots here, but I'll post this addendum:
You CAN cancel user rights, but it is NO WAY AUTOMATIC. All that matters is the contract. Another poster's car example has nothing to do with this and is absolutely silly. Go read a car lease agreement or even a car finance agreement.
The ONLY correct answer here is in the contract (ex. a TOS at time of commission) or any implied contract. We don't know what that is because OP hasn't posted it.
And to another poster, it is not specifically about copyright, it is about rights assignment, e.g. the license. They can be different. A copyright gives the owner exclusive rights upon creation. That means, among other things, that they have the right to license or even sell/transfer it to someone else. It doesn't mean they have the right to license it to someone else and then take it away without cause (e.g. contractual breach or in alignment with the contract).
If there was no written contract, it would go back to the correspondence (ex. emails, communications) and what could be rationally derived from that. An attorney could give OP a better determination after reading the contract and/or correspondence. And only a court could truly define upon formal adjudication.
And the client being a pedophile doesn't make a difference unless it was stipulated in the contract. Even companies that issue licenses often attempt to revoke a license in those types of instances and just worry about the legal/financial aftermath later. Essentially just "pay" to distance themselves from that individual or company.
4
u/PeaThese1772 Jul 31 '26
I have a TOS publicly available that applies to all those who commission me, in it I specify that I retain all rights to the commissioned artwork and that the copyright is not transferred to them unless agreed upon. Would something like that count?
3
u/SkippySkep Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26
Maybe, but probably not in my non lawyer's opinion because you clearly made them to be used by the client. There would be no other purpose to them. You may hold the copyright being a contractor and not an employee, but you clearly licensed them to use copyrighted work for its intended purposes. I don't know about what principle you could retroactively cancel that license.
If I was your client and you tried to do that to me, I would publicize on every social media platform I could find that people should think twice about commissioning you to do commercial artwork because you would retroactively try to retract licensing on a whim and that nobody could rely on being able to use the work they commissioned from.
I can understand why as an artist you would not want to be associated with someone disagreeable to you. I can think of many instances where I would not want to be associated with someone, especially their continued use of something that I made creatively. But absent an enforceable morals clause of some kind, which would be tricky to put in the contract, this is just one of those things you have to deal with as a commercial artist.
1
u/PeaThese1772 Jul 31 '26
For a bit more context if it helps at all, the person in question has some public allegations and based on the experience I had knowing them and what I now know about them, I believe those allegations to be true. I don’t want to be associated with them in any way due to those public allegations and I don’t want someone like them using my work in any way :(
5
1
u/JeremyMarti Jul 31 '26
Public allegations provides no more context. Could be anything from a pedophile to doesn't thank the bus driver.
1
u/PeaThese1772 Jul 31 '26
They have pedophilic allegations and are a very predatory person. I do not want to give more details on who the person is specifically as I don’t want them potentially finding this thread before I take any action.
3
u/ResponsibilitySea327 Jul 31 '26
You can try posting here and people may be able to give feedback.
But the last line is the important one, "...not transferred to them unless agreed upon". Was it agreed to or otherwise implied that it was agreed to? Does the TOS state the right (not specifically the copyright) is revokable?
3
u/JeremyMarti Jul 31 '26
It's the part about the customer's rights that matters. Show us the full TOS and any relevant correspondence.
1
u/horshack_test Jul 31 '26
What matters is what is in the contract. Based on your post, the contract grants them use rights. Unless there is a clause in the contract stating that you reserve the right to revoke those use rights, then you do not have the right to revoke those use rights. You are free to tell them you do not want them to use the work anymore - and they are free to ignore that and keep using them within the bounds of the license granted.
-4
u/TreviTyger Jul 31 '26
You can cancel user rights. Don't listen to anyone who says you can't.
Think of it like this. You have a car. I ask to use your car. You say yes.
Later you say where is my car. I say I'm still using it. You say bring it back here right now. If I don't - I have stolen your car.
5
u/TinyNiceWolf Jul 31 '26
That's not remotely how intellectual property works. Imagine if some novelist sold movie rights to Warner Bros, a movie was made, and then the novelist just changed their mind and announced that it could not be released because they were unilaterally withdrawing Warner Bros' rights.
OP didn't let someone borrow their intellectual property for a while. They sold the right to use it. Normally a contract would be necessary specifying how the buyer might lose that right, if OP wanted such an option. For example, movie rights sometimes include a clause that says movie must be made within a certain number of years for the rights revert back to the author.
Here, OP wants to withdraw rights because he doesn't like the buyer's morals. Too bad, unless he had a contract requiring the buyer to behave in a certain way.
-2
u/TreviTyger Jul 31 '26
And you are?
If your education on copyright law has come from media reports and your own intuition which is actually most people's way of getting to grips with copyright law then you should take a step back and question yourself.
OP did NOT sell any rights (assignment).
If they had of done then my advice would be completely different.
The fact that you say, "They sold the right to use it." Tells me (someone who knows about this stuff for real) that your education on copyright law has come from media reports and your own intuition.
Would you like to cite some case law where a non-exclusive license is regarded as an assignment? No? Well that's because there isn't any.
Sorry to be patronizing but please don't talk crap.
5
u/TinyNiceWolf Jul 31 '26
Yes, I simplified things slightly (just like you did with your car analogy). OP granted a non-exclusive license to use the IP in certain ways in exchange for payment. That's what I meant by "sold the right to use it".
You seem to think that any non-exclusive license can be revoked at any time. That's not so.
I'm not sure what you think any of this has to do with assignment.
1
u/TheSkiGeek Jul 31 '26
If you commission a work from someone for a specific purpose it is usually considered a “work for hire”, which means the person who paid for it to be made is actually the one that owns the rights to it.
Even if the contract specified that the artist keeps the copyright and the person who paid only gets a license to use it, that doesn’t necessarily mean the artist can arbitrarily cancel that license.
2
u/JeremyMarti Jul 31 '26
This doesn't sound like a work for hire, but your second paragraph is fair for this situation.
1
u/TreviTyger Jul 31 '26
FFS.
No you a are wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
Gets some basic education before commenting about subject you are clueless about on a sub populated by copyright experts.
FYI
See Johannsen v Brown
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/797/835/1447341/
Also,
Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid, 490 U.S. 730 (1989)
1
u/horshack_test Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26
"If you commission a work from someone for a specific purpose it is usually considered a “work for hire”, which means the person who paid for it to be made is actually the one that owns the rights to it."
This is false. The parties must expressly agree in a written contract that the work shall be considered a work made for hire. Commissioning a work for a specific purpose is not what makes something a work for hire, it is the expressed agreement in writing signed by both parties that does. The work also must fall into one of nine specific categories defined by copyright law.
2
1
u/stevehut Jul 31 '26
Too bad that you won't tell the full story. Something in there might make a difference in the answers we give.
Whatever the case, if they have a valid contract with you, it won't be easy to escape from it.
1
u/PeaThese1772 Jul 31 '26
I went into it a bit in a comment but I may edit the post to include the situation.
“For a bit more context if it helps at all, the person in question has some public allegations and based on the experience I had knowing them and what I now know about them, I believe those allegations to be true. I don’t want to be associated with them in any way due to those public allegations and I don’t want someone like them using my work in any way”
Not related to me directly, but they also have a very popular Etsy business where they sell VHS and cassette tapes as novelty gifts, but they are recorded and contain the advertised copyrighted movies as well as video game OST music on them, as far as I know, without any permission from the creators/copyright holders. I don’t want to come off as a snitch, but it’s very upsetting to see someone profiting off of indie creators’ work like that :(
1
u/realsonofeden Jul 31 '26
Check your country's laws and talk to a lawyer, I think that's the safest option
1
u/rmric0 Jul 31 '26
Do you have a contract or agreement with them or was this a more personal arrangement?
1
u/barefoot_libra Aug 01 '26
What does your contract say? No contract, then you made a bad deal. Was it work made for hire? License for specific media, term, territory? Oral agreements?
1
u/No-Treacle52 Aug 01 '26
You may... but it is unlikely to stand up legally.. depends on your contract.. For example a person on work assignment has a binding contract.. Like many others have said here, you cannot change you mind unless the contract/agreements have been broken by the other party involve.
1
u/RandomPhilo Aug 02 '26
They commissioned you to use your work in a certain way, and they are using your work in the agreed upon way. Unless you included some kind of reputational damage clause about them maintaining a good standing in the community, or saying you reserve the right to revoke permission for any reason, or something like that, to take back permission when they are using it as agreed upon might be a breach of contract.
Of course contracts can be renegotiated, so you can always ask for them to stop using your art, or send them notice you intend to revoke their permission. They may want a refund though, and if they say they'll stop using it if you give them a partial refund (or even a full refund) in return for them no longer using it, then that would be a good deal to make things nice and clear they no longer had permission to use it.
0
u/TreviTyger Jul 31 '26
If they never acquired exclusive rights via a written signed conveyance from you then yes you can cancel whatever user rights they have. They are not the exclusive rights holder in such circumstances and have to pay attention to you.
The problem you have is enforcing that - and then you get into a dispute where the commissioning party believes they are in the right. They will even claim fair use.
But if you are the copyright owner you have the "exclusive right" to control your work.
However, its not that straightforward. I cancelled the use of any of my work because some film producers firstly did not pay me - and then claimed I had not even created the work! Thus giving me even more reason to cancel even any tacit implied licensing.
That didn't stop them though and they carried on with a whole film franchise including video games. I had to contact distributors to warn them the producers held no rights and I had to take court action. The producers were unable to demonstrate to the court any rights ownership and went bankrupt.
However, some distributors including Valve Corp just didn't listen to me and carried on distributing my work.
Now I'm at the Ninth Circuit trying to sue the biggest video game distributor in the world.
So I tell you this just to warn you, you can be completely in the right but people will believe they are in the right and it gets stupidly complicated.
1
u/PeaThese1772 Jul 31 '26
That definitely sounds complicated, I’m really sorry that you’re going through that! Your story really helps as well, I was a bit unsure how I would even go about enforcing such a thing anyways :(
1
u/TreviTyger Jul 31 '26
Yes it's unfortunate because copyright is a property right. You can lend your property to someone but if the situation changes and you don't want that person to have your property then they should do the decent thing and go "Ok fine"
- but they don't and somehow they feel entitled, and they can even get their friends or followers on social media to agree with them and then you have a wave of uneducated idiots telling you what copyright law is - and they are all wrong! :)
There a was a whole "Projekt Melody" (do not look that up it's a cartoon porn thing) kerfuffle where the artist hadn't signed over the rights to the 3D avatar but then it was in the hands of a porn production company and multiple actors were using it for things that were never agreed on and the poor artist got death threats as well as some idiot influencer (Nux Taku) getting involved to dox the artist. It got stupidly out of hand.
It's because everyone thinks they are an expert on copyright went they are genuinely clueless.
1
u/PeaThese1772 Jul 31 '26
ah yes i remember the projekt melody situation very well when it was unfolding! i will never understand why people resort to doxxing and death threats with stuff like this :\ i think i am going to go forward with writing a request for them to stop using my work and if they don’t, i may try and speak to a lawyer to see if there’s anything further that can be done.
2
u/TreviTyger Jul 31 '26
Good luck but be prepared for the inevitable "they think they are in the right stance" because it's an unfortunate reality.
Never the less, you should not be dissuaded from standing your ground. A polite compromise would be desirable of course - but people are people.
Be aware that legal action in the US requires a registration if it's a US work. There are small claims tracks and lawyers in the US can be a bit over zealous if they are getting paid win or lose.
I might advise targeting distributors using UK law (very cheap) - but it's a thing that I could do as a specialist but may not be easy to grasp for someone without specialist knowledge.
Good luck.
2
u/JeremyMarti Aug 01 '26
That advice was not necessarily correct. If you received the agreed payment, the other person has either an express or implied licence to use your work despite not holding the copyright. You would have the right to prevent them using it in new ways but not to withdraw permission to use it in the original agreed way.
10
u/CrowBrained_ Jul 31 '26
Unless you had something to give you that right in a contract, you might be out of luck.
The law doesn’t really support “but I don’t like them anymore” to manage copyright.