HELP needed with original painting

[Mike Costigan]

Imperial Tobacco commissioned the original set of paintings and as such I would expect they owned the original copyright; the mount on Tony's painting would suggest that he probably has the original Imperial Tobacco copy, but there would be nothing to stop Eric Bottomley from producing another, or several, similar paintings (probably with minor alterations) and presumably he could claim copyright of those?

Once the original Imperial Tobacco paintings were disposed of I doubt they would have any further interest in the copyright, but as you say the copyright laws are a minefield for the ignorant!

[Mick Hanna]

I thought I would spend a few minutes trawling the internet to see if I could unearth the original sale. No luck with the Austin Seven painting, but Dreweatts of Bristol auctioned off 4 other Eric Bottomley paintings from the Motoring History series - a Leyland lorry, AC Cobra, Trolleybus and Lotus Cortinas - all listed at £80-£100 pounds in their 17 October 2013 catalogue. They all sold for slightly under or over the estimate £84-£108 with costs.  It was probably around this time, or a little later,  I spotted the Austin Seven painting.

[Michael]

Imperial Tobacco commissioned the original set of paintings and as such I would expect they owned the original copyright; the mount on Tony's painting would suggest that he probably has the original Imperial Tobacco copy, but there would be nothing to stop Eric Bottomley from producing another, or several, similar paintings (probably with minor alterations) and presumably he could claim copyright of those?

Once the original Imperial Tobacco paintings were disposed of I doubt they would have any further interest in the copyright, but as you say the copyright laws are a minefield for the ignorant!

Yes. I suspect that 'theoretically' Imperial Tobacco still have copyright for their specific product category (depending on commissioning contract if any) and the original art 'theoretically' would have been returned to the artist who would own the actual painting. Pre '70s (I think) this was all a lot vaguer and commercial artists rarely ever got their stuff back.

There would be nothing to stop him producing further 'similar' examples unless he were to sell them on to another tobacco company who could then be seen to be 'passing off' their product as Imperial's Tobacco's thereby ensuring that sundry copyright lawyers get lots of work at interstellar hourly rates!

I could go on for ever and but to be honest I think it would be fine to sell this picture but I would not suggest incorporating it into any tobacco related advertisement should such a thing still exist...