Copyright Infringement
Copyright laws, as adduced by Katie (2018), mainly confer and provides the holders of content privileges and rights with respect to the production of an art form of art that has a financial connotation. Under 17 U.S.C. § 102, the existence of copyright protection plays a fundamental role in the protection of original works that are authored and fixed in any tangible medium for expression from where they can be communicated, perceived, or reproduced. Under the Act, the duplication of any protected form of work without the proper permission of the holder or owner plays a role in constituting an infringement of the established right. Tattoos, as alleged in the views of Katie (2018), equally fall under the tangible forms of a medium of expression; however, they pose questions as to whether the works of authorship are original.
As to the owners of the rights of artwork following its commissioning, Katie (2018) alleges that the decision on whether tattoos are susceptible to copyright to determine the owner of the rights remains a farfetched issue. However, different jurisdictions view this element differently. However, copyright ownership is retained by the producer of an artwork who holds the certificate as well as the licensures of authenticity besides an artist’s catalog that accentuates the pieces and the artworks sold (Kate, 2018). This, therefore, means that the sale of a producer’s artwork may not necessarily the purchase of assigned copyright to the purchasers given the fact that this remains the bone of contention as tattoos are still perceived to fall outside of the bracket of copyrighted content. Unless contrarily proven, the creator of content or rather the author and the publisher who appear on the art or the work are presumed to be the actual owners of the copyrighted material.
References
Kate, Scholz (2018). Copyright and Tattoos: Who owns your ink?