In my Professional Practice class, we had a guest Corey Hamilton, come in and speak about the importance of copyrights and trademarks. He touched base on ownership what it means to copyright your work as well as fair use. One example was a painting that included Tiger Woods, called Masters of Augusta done by Rick Rush.
“Rick Rush has been described as “America’s sports artist.” The subjects of his paintings include a wide variety of sports and sports’ stars. After golfing superstar Tiger Woods won the 1997 Masters Tournament in Augusta, Georgia, Rush created a painting entitled The Masters of Augusta, portraying Woods in three different poses along with a collage of several other past winners of the tournament. Jireh Publications, the publisher and seller of Rush’s work, sold prints and posters of the painting. ETW Corporation, the licensing agent for Woods, sued Jireh claiming that, among other causes of action, the painting was a violation of its trademark on the image of Tiger Woods. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed holding that “as a general rule, a person’s image or likeness cannot function as a trademark.” The Court found that the painting was more than a mere literal likeness of Woods; the work contained a creative component that originated with Rush and was unique to his talent. In other words, Woods’ image was merely the raw material for Rush’s original artistic expression. As such, Rush’s First Amendment right to artistic freedom outweighed Woods’ property rights in the profits generated by his image.” http://www.tjcenter.org/ArtOnTrial/trademark.html
From Corey Hamilton’s lecture I was able to the value of copyrighting my own work. With social media being the main gateway to get their artwork out into the public eye for artist today, Young artists need to be aware of what they are doing when they put their work into the world with out copyrighting it.
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