Legal Question in Intellectual Property in Wisconsin

Re: Artist commission

I think that you are not an employee and therefore you own the copyrights in the designs. May I suggest that you go to the Library of Congress web page and register these designs. It may cost you a few hundred dollars depending on the amount of designs you have created. I would register them individually rather than as a collection.

Secondly I would get a contract in writing with this business. Your situation sounds like an accident waiting to happen. Contact a business lawyer in Wisconsin who can assist you with the agreement.

Good Luck!

Re: Artist commission

Your description implies that you are an independent contractor, which would be inferred if you set your own work hours, work at home or other location of your choice, use your own artistic tools, computers, CAD, or other implements; that no deductions are made from your pay for Social Security, FICA, other withholding, etc.; that no unemployment compensation, workers' compensation or health insurance benefits are paid on your behalf. In copyright law, an independent contractor owns copyright in the artistic "work" in the absence of a "WORK FOR HIRE AGREEMENT."

Go through the foregoing criteria to determine whether you are indeed an independent contractor. And if so, and also if you have not signed a WORK FOR HIRE AGREEMENT, you can make copies, replicas of the work you have already completed, offer your work for sale to others, and exercise any and all rights of ownership to your works.

See the U.S. Supreme Court's opinion in Community for Creative Non-Violence -vs.- Reid.

Best,

Joseph H. Taddeo