Tattoo- Your Expression or Mine

Tattoo artists are artists who create on human canvas. Tattooing as an art has been around for ages and is one of the oldest forms or art and expression. There has been a patronage by both celebrities and common people and they have becoming more mainstream and acceptable than ever. This article discusses the ambiguity in copyright for permanent tattoos which are a debatable form of art for copyrights, the designs on tattoo sticker/ stick on are covered under the copyright law and the copyright ownership remains with the creator (usually no dispute there).

The art of tattooing has two people involved, the artist who creates and the person whose body is being used as a canvas. This brings us to a discussion of whose tattoo is it anyway; the artists or the person who is tattooed? Logically the answer is the person on whom the tattoo is inked is the owner as they are walking around with the tattoo, and the tattoo is going to be on their bodies forever (unless the person decides to modify or surgically remove them) and they have paid for it as well. This is now being disputed by tattoo artists who claim that they have a copyright on the tattoos as tattoos are art form and they are artists. They are now increasingly asking for the compensation for their tattoos appearing on silver screens and video games along with the images of the person who has been tattooed, as it would happen naturally with any other form of artistic expression which is protected under copyrights.

A few tattoo artists have even gone ahead and sued companies that have shown unique tattoos created by them in various capacities. Notable cases include Tattoo artist Stephen Allen suing video game maker Electronic Arts and former Miami Dolphins running back Ricky Williams over a tattoo Allen put on Williams' bicep. The tattoo appeared on the cover of EA's "NFL Street" video game claiming copyright (source: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-raustiala-tattoo-copyright-20131006-story.html) and tattoo artist Victor Whitmill against Warner Bros. For showing a tattoo created by him for Mike Tyson in the movie Hangover-II. The former case was dismissed the latter case was settled for an undisclosed amount.

Now this leads us to a lot of questions as if the tattoo artist is the owner of the tattoo they can prevent the tattooed person from tampering or removing their creation, which sounds vague as people have a right over their own bodies and someone else asking them to stop modifications of any sort sounds absurd.  Also tattoos themselves are often heavily borrowed from surroundings and are often copies of existing artworks, which means that they themselves can be infringements of someone else's creation. Another issue with tattoos is that the tattooed person is actively involved in creating the tattoo which is often based on the persons personality, their past experiences and life events, and they are the canvas for the artists creation, which makes them as actively involved in the process as the artist himself. Moreover if the tattooed person is a celebrity it is often possible that their images are used to promote products especially in the case of sports persons whose images are used for virtual games and the tattoos on their bodies are a part of their persona.  In this case the tattoo artist cannot claim that the tattoo be removed from the illustrations/ caricatures/images as they are an integral part of the celebrities image.

 Although artistry of the tattoo artist as an artist working on a different canvas cannot be denied in this case, tattoo art and copyright is a grey area in the field of intellectual property, which need further investigations and probably amendments in the existing structure of copyrights, or a different law altogether. The rights of the tattoo artists remain ambiguous till then.