Regarding copyright law, well, I might be able to lend a hand. Sort of.
One of the big reasons that I don't sell prints of my artwork has to do with all of that stuff. As it stands, when I sell a painting to a client, technically there's no need for me to sit and fret about those laws because I'm selling an original, one-of-a-kind piece of art. From what I've learned from intellectual property lawyers is that it's only when you get into the practice of selling prints, you're starting to use the image (whether it's my painting or a photograph from the Daily News) for commercial purposes.
So, here's where things get a little tricky...
Imagery-wise, if it's in the public domain (like the images in the Bain collection at the Library of Congress) then you're in good shape. Otherwise, you have to open up your wallet, because the photographer (or person[s] who own the rights to the image[s]) has the copyright on his/her side for at least 50 years after his/her death. As you can imagine, plenty of companies specialize in handling those images (as well as their copyrights) and are in the business of making money solely on their various usages. These are places like Corbis, Getty, AP and many of the other conglomerates that you might see stamped on the back of your photos (or are mentioned in Yee's book). When it comes to making prints of one of their photos, they have representatives who will guide you through the whole process of the copyright - how long it lasts, what size the image would be, how large of a print run you'd be doing, where it would be seen, etc. And of course, all of that stuff is stipulated within a written contract and ends up being a pretty solid way of getting into the print business.
But, here's where things get
REALLY tricky...
Since these images (and in this case, the negatives Henry has in his auction) depict famous baseball players, there's more to consider than just photography rights. The people at Corbis will even tell you that while dealing with them - that you're buying the rights to the image itself, not the intellectual property within. Plenty of these ballplayers (really, the majority of the deceased Hall of Famers) have their estates represented by larger companies who can be QUITE litigious if they feel their client's likeness is being used without them getting their cut. For instance, CMG Worldwide manages the copyrights for a plethora of ballplayers, including Ruth, Gehrig, Cobb, Wagner and a cast of hundreds. They represent estates of other sports figures, as well as a ton famous actors/actresses (Marilyn, James Dean), musicians (Chuck Berry, Ella Fitzgerald), and even trademarks (Buffer's "Let's get ready to rumble"). As you can imagine, these guys are no joke.
So, the problem is, if you bought a negative of Babe Ruth, you might be able to clear the photography rights issue to sell your prints, but in order to not have beef with a place like CMG, they would have to be paid. A lot. Unfortunately, the same goes for MLB and even the MLBPA. Since you'd be making commercial use of that NY logo, or the name on the jersey, it's easy for them to step in and ask for a slice of the pie. And by 'ask', I mean 'take.'
Granted, there are THOUSANDS (if not hundreds of thousands) of people who sell prints of these players without attaining said rights. You can see plenty of them on eBay and other photography websites. I would imagine that these companies don't come after them because they're small potatoes for the most part. In other words, they're not making a huge amount of money from selling their prints on eBay or wherever. They're able to slide underneath the radar.
You might notice, however, that a company like Photofile has a bunch of stickers and logos on each photograph they sell. That means that every one of those groups holds some sort of copyright in Photofile's efforts, whether it's the photographers, MLB, the Hall of Fame, CMG or whomever. And even then, Photofile still has to submit each image to a team of people who determine whether that what they're putting out is a suitable way to 'sell' that brand, and whether or not their rights are being violated in any way. And believe me, Photofile pays a small fortune to each to be able to use their intellectual property annually. But of course, they're a huge company, so they can afford it.
Case in point, I remember when I was just starting out painting these baseball images, say 2003 or so. At that point, I was 23, somewhat fresh out of college and still living in my parent's basement. I made a painting of Mickey Mantle that I thought could be nice to try and make prints from. I knew nothing about copyrights then, but I figured that I would at least have to have permission from Mantle's estate to do so. I got in contact with them, and to start things off, they thanked me for even doing so - stating that most people purposely ignore that route. Then, after telling them that I was hoping to make about 100 prints at a size that was somewhere in the neighborhood of 16" x 20" or so, the hammer fell. They wanted 25 prints for their own use (fine), 10% of royalties from what I sell (fine), and $25,000 up front (sh*t). I didn't feel all that well when I got off the phone with them.
There have been PLENTY of artists who have made similar artistic renderings of famous sports icons, sold prints without the permission of these estates, and then have been called out and sued by their respective subjects. The most famous of those lawsuits was between the artist Rick Rush and Tiger Woods from about 10 years ago:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/03/sp...lf/03GOLF.html
Rush won, I believe. And so did his lawyer's wallets. They won BIG TIME.
Hopefully I'm not putting the fear of God into anyone who wants to sell prints and the like...but before doing so, I think it's definitely important to know that there's some risk involved if the proper parties don't get their proper cut.
Anywho, I'm not sure if all of this makes sense. It's 9:30 on a Saturday morning, and I wish I was sleeping in. But yeah, hopefully it's somewhat coherent, and sheds some light into the whole issue...
And of course, if anyone has questions that they think I might be able to help with, just ask!
Graig