Wednesday 30 April 2014

ARR: UK seeks evidence from the art trade

On behalf of the British government, the Intellectual Property Office is currently conducting an open consultation, "Artist’s Resale Right: Evidence Gathering", the details of which you can peruse at your leisure here.  The main body of the text reads as follows:
The Artist’s Resale Right (ARR) entitles authors of original works of art (including paintings, engravings, sculpture and ceramics) to a royalty each time one of their works is resold through an auction house or art market professional. 
We are interested in evidence relating to: 
  • the scale and cost of administering the Right and the impact this has on art businesses [issues touched upon in relation to ARR in Australia in our previous blogpost, here] 
  • the numbers of artists who are benefiting from the Right, particularly at the lower threshold [ditto] 
  • Information received through this exercise will contribute to a periodic review at an EU level, which is likely to take place in 2015 [It would be good to know if other EU Member States are also conducting their own evidence-gathering exercises. Can readers let us know if they come across any?]. 
    Art dealers, galleries and auction houses are invited to complete the online questionnaire below as part of that evidence-gathering exercise [in other words, this is not for artists -- or lawyers, it seems, but ...]. 
    We will also be seeking information from the Artists’ Collecting Society and Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS), who are the collecting societies through whom artists receive the royalty payment [... presumably the opinions of artists are collectively harvested via these bodies alone]. 
    We intend to publish a report of the findings in September 2014. 
    Frequently asked questions on ARR are answered on the website of DACS.
    Grateful thanks to Chris Torrero for drawing this to our attention!

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