Ownership of copyright should be covered in the agreement with the client. Your solicitor should be able to draft a contract in such a way as to give you rights under copyright law as well as under the contract. Such a contract may assist you in the event that a client uses your work before paying you. For example, it might provide that the client has no licence to use the work, or any assignment of copyright does not take effect, until payment has been received.

If your agreement does not expressly cover the issue, or there is no written contract, the owner of copyright will generally be the creator, unless there is an implied agreement to the contrary. The client, however, will have a licence to use the work for the agreed purposes and while you may be entitled to recover the money owing to you as a debt, you may not be able to stop the client using the work for the purposes for which it was created.

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You will probably own the copyright in the work unless you and your client had an agreement to the contrary. In this situation, where the drawings were provided for approval, it is not clear that you have granted the client a licence to use the drawings for this purpose. Your rights will depend on all the facts, and you will generally need legal advice on your rights.

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Again, this will depend on who owns copyright, and the rights agreed upon. As noted above, agreements do not necessarily need to be in writing, and in some cases a term may be implied by the circumstances of the agreement.

If you own copyright, or have retained the right to reproduce the works, you will not need permission.

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It would not be an infringement of copyright to produce an advertisement that merely looks similar in style and layout to another advertisement, if the later advertisement did not reproduce a substantial part of any copyright material.

However, it is likely that other areas of law would apply in this situation. The client might breach trade practices law, or the law on passing off.

If copyright were infringed, you would probably be liable since you would have reproduced the copyright material. The client would also be liable for their own infringements in making any further copies of the infringing advertisement, and would probably also be liable for having authorised infringements by you and any printer or publisher.

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If you are the copyright owner, people will generally need your permission to scan your work. They will also need your permission to alter the scanned work and create a new image, if an important part of your work will be recognisable in the new image. However, in some circumstances, including where the person is a client or former client, they may be entitled to do these things as a result of a written or verbal agreement. Unless this issue has been clearly negotiated and set out in a written agreement, you may need legal advice on whether a client or former client is in a position to have another designer use your work.

Depending on all the circumstances, even if you do not own copyright in the work, your moral rights may have been infringed. For more information, see our information sheet Moral rights.

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There is no rule in copyright law that permits reproduction of an image if a percentage of it is changed, or if a certain number of alterations are made. If you can put the two works side by side and identify important parts from the original that have been copied, it is likely that you need permission.

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