Out of the darkness

Roger Felton (Letters, DW 30 October) is not alone in the darkness that is our industry’s grasp of design law – or lack of it.

I recently attended a one-day Design Law workshop, held by the Design Business Association with Henry Lydiate as speaker. Frankly, I found it frightening that there is so much more to copyright than is commonly known – design right, licences, trademarks and legal moral rights – heard of all these? There is a huge gap in creatives’ knowledge about these issues, which leaves us open to abuse.

I am re-examining our terms of business and looking at ways to educate staff and clients, to ensure we have control over our creations, and don’t lose revenue.

There are laws to protect us, which we should all be aware of and use to suit our individual practices. I strongly recommend that anyone in our business attends a similar seminar, if the DBA is running another.

A final tip for Roger: by supplying the whole job, electronically or otherwise, you are not giving away the copyright – that remains your property. You merely grant a licence to use the material under agreed terms, for which you decide the fee.

Steve Wright

Creative director

D4B Creative Communications

sw@d4b.co.uk

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