Your Art, Your Rights

WIPO has launched a free tool that helps artists protect their work and manage the business side of their creative practice.

Imagine you’ve just finished a piece you’re truly proud of when a gallery asks to reproduce it, a brand proposes a licensing deal, and you discover that someone has already shared it online without giving you credit. Would you know what you can agree to, what you should refuse, and what you are entitled to in return?

If those questions make you uneasy, you are far from alone, because most artists spend years developing their craft and very little time learning about contracts or copyright. These are the matters that determine how a work circulates, who benefits from it and whether its creator receives proper recognition.

The story of Mickey Mouse shows how much is at stake. Disney protected its most famous character for close to a century, and for decades that copyright ranked among the most valuable in the world. On 1 January 2024, the earliest version of Mickey, the one that appeared in the 1928 short Steamboat Willie, entered the public domain in the United States and became freely available for reuse. Later versions of the character, however, remain protected by copyright, and Mickey himself is still a registered Disney trademark, which means that a single drawing ended up carrying several layers of rights, each with its own rules and expiry date. Disney can rely on entire teams of lawyers to manage this complexity, whereas independent artists rarely have that support, which makes understanding these layers all the more important for them.

It is this gap between creativity and the business of creativity that a new initiative from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) aims to close. Called CLIP Visual Arts, the initiative is a free online platform designed for visual artists who want to understand their intellectual property rights without getting lost in dense legal language. Its resources explain the essentials in a clear and practical way, helping artists become familiar with the legal side of their profession, learn how to protect their creations and make informed decisions about how their work is used, shared and monetised.

The timing could hardly be better, since images now travel across the internet in a matter of seconds and AI continues to raise new questions about authorship and ownership. In this landscape, knowing your rights has become a fundamental professional skill, just as essential to an artist’s practice as any brush or camera.

CLIP Visual Arts also benefits from strong institutional backing, as it forms part of WIPO for Creators, an initiative dedicated to promoting awareness of authors’ rights across the creative industries. The International Authors Forum (IAF), a member of the CLIP Advisory Board, supports the platform and regards it as an important step toward a more sustainable creative sector.

Not every artist has an army of lawyers like Disney, but with CLIP Visual Arts every artist can now count on clear, reliable guidance to understand and defend their rights. Protecting creativity is not a privilege for the few, but a right that belongs to anyone who creates!

Explore the platform at: goclip.org/visualarts

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