Daniel Abraham

Daniel Abraham—Attorney at Law—talks to Giuseppe Castellano about his career protecting the rights of artists.

He shares how he and his small team reversed a 1986 tax law that destroyed an artists’s ability to deduct expenses; how gatekeepers attempt to separate artists from their art; why illustrators need to know the difference between “specs and terms”; how illustrators can protect—and make money from—their “authorship”; and so much more.

To learn more about Daniel, copyright law, and the services he provides for artists, visit legaleasel.com. To email Daniel, click here.

Artists mentioned in this episode include: Bill Mauldin, Herb Block, Keith Haring, and Kenny Sharf

Daniel shared a lot of information about protecting your art. He was kind enough to provide his advice in writing—including links. From Daniel:

The link for the Copyright Office website in general is: copyright.gov

The link for registering copyrights is: copyright.gov/registration

The direct link for logging into the ECO—the online registration system—is: eco.copyright.gov. To register works on the ECO site, one must first provide a username and password. I recommend that people also take a look at the Copyright Office circulars for guidance in the registration process. The link to the Copyright Office circulars is: copyright.gov/circs.

To repeat what I probably touched on, but did not go into detail on, in our conversation, it is possible to register up to 10 unpublished works as a “collection” (NOT a “collective work!”—To get INDIVIDUAL coverage of unpublished material, the works MUST be a “collection”!), but works, once published, must GENERALLY be registered individually, which can get expensive. It is better to register works when they are still UNpublished. One CANNOT mix published and unpublished work in a registration.

There are TWO major exceptions regarding group registration of PUBLISHED work:

1. It is possible to register up to one year’s worth of work done for periodicals—on a single registration form—for a single fee, using the GR/CP (Group Registration of Contributions to Periodicals) option. However, if one is doing a quantity of work for periodicals—print, online, or both—it is WISER to register one’s periodical work QUARTERLY, since that means each quarter’s registrations will have been made within the magic “Three-Months-of-First Legitimate-Publication” grace period, within which work infringed before registration is deemed registered prior to infringement, which preserves the best legal remedies.
2. If an artist has done a lot of work for a single item—the illustrations for a book, a graphic novel, or an advertising supplement that’s inserted in a newspaper—the artist can register ALL those images, and have them individually covered, provided that the works were all published at the same time and the artist is the sole author of the multiple images being registered.

All this may sound confusing, but it really is not. Briefly:

A copyright CANNOT be enforced if it is not registered.

• Unless registration is done PRIOR to infringement, the artist loses the right to claim statutory damages and attorney’s fees, and is limited to claiming provable actual damages.
• Up to ten unpublished works may be registered as a “collection.” Work is “unpublished” if it is registered prior to publication, even if it is “going to be published” in a few days.
• If unpublished work is infringed before it is registered, the artist loses the right to claim statutory damages and attorney’s fees for that infringement.
• If a work is registered within three months of first legitimate publication, but after infringement, the artist may still claim statutory damages and attorney’s fees as if it had been registered prior to the infringement.
• The effective date of the registration relates back to when the Copyright Office logged in the application, even if the actual registration does not issue until months later.

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