International licensing solutions for Australian artists and businesses
December 12, 2018
The Copyright Agency Visual Arts licensing team often provides its services internationally. Notably in 2018 they licensed Australian artworks to clients in both China and Canada.
Copyright Agency Manager of Visual Arts, Judy Grady, says “We have a network of international partners in more than 40 countries who we work with to license the work of Australian artists.
“Importantly, our licensing team makes sure the chosen artwork is reproduced to a high standard and in keeping with the artists’ wishes, is correctly attributed and protected by an appropriate agreement.”
Working closely with Canadian partner, SODRAC, the Copyright Agency licensed New South Wales’ artist Susannah Blaxill’s botanical artwork Magnolia to Canadian yoghurt company Liberté Skyr’s vanilla yoghurt (both French and English versions of packaging).
Another example of licensing was the use of artist Meg Lewer’s paintings on wine labels for Deonte Estate’s export range of Australian wines.
The wines will primarily be sold in China and showcase six of Meg’s paintings. Meg says, “When I was approached by Deonte Wines a year or so ago regarding them acquiring the perpetual copyright for some images, I had no idea where to go or what to do.
“Due to the negotiating skills used [by the Copyright Agency], I was able to receive a much better licensing deal than I was initially offered…including having my website on the back of all the 500,000-odd bottles.”
Equally satisfied with the collaborative service received from Copyright Agency, Deonte Wines’ Key Account Manager, Connie Ou says, “We were so thrilled to be able to license Meg Lewer’s artworks … helping up to create a unique impression of Australia to our Chinese customers.
“It made good sense to us that the licence fee we paid goes directly to Meg – because her talent and creativity is helping us to market our wines internationally.”
The Copyright Agency works with a wide variety of customers to license artwork for a range of uses. You can see more examples in the Copyright Agency’s Annual Report.
To find out more about Copyright Agency’s services, visit copyright.com.au or contact the Visual Arts Licensing team on visualarts@copyright.com.au.