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Say I have made a great piece of art that people want to print and sell posters of, and also that I really, really hate Steve.

Can I write a license to print and sell posters of my art where, if you sell a poster to Steve, the entire license is revoked retroactively, and all the posters you printed and sold are now unlicensed, and not just the one you sold to Steve? Like, the license for all the posters is conditioned on, in the future, never selling one to Steve?

If so, I could collect more actual damages, because your profit on all your posters, and not just on the one you sold to Steve and subsequent ones, would be actual damages, right?

But, it seems strange for the question of whether a particular copy infringes copyright to be undecided indefinitely. A poster could have been sold on and imported and exported several times and then suddenly decades later become an infringing copy subject to seizure and destruction.

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    Even if you could, I think you wouldn't be able to completely avoid Steve getting a poster. They could have another person buy from your licensee and then resell it to them. You wouldn't be able to restrict that because of the first-sale doctrine. Your licensee wouldn't have violated the license/contract, because they can't control their buyers reselling or gifting the physical copy to whomever they please.
    – JoL
    Commented Jan 18 at 23:03
  • So basically the Stuart Semple Agreement on steroids? "Online purchasers of the paint are required to make a legal declaration that “you are not Anish Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated to Anish Kapoor [and] you are not purchasing this item on behalf of Anish Kapoor or an associate of Anish Kapoor.”"
    – bertieb
    Commented Jan 19 at 11:21
  • @bertieb Or an associate of an associate of an associate... Anish Kapoor could just ask A to ask B to ask C to ask D, etc. The chain just needs to be longer. Maybe virus-like contracts are a thing, such that someone that possesses the poster can't stop possessing it unless they find someone that's willing to enter into a contract such that the new person can't stop possessing it unless they find someone that's willing to enter into a contract, etc.
    – JoL
    Commented Jan 19 at 19:09

3 Answers 3

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You would probably need a specific contract, signed by both parties, and not just a "license agreement" like the ones you see on the web.

The contract should be very specific on the penalties for infringement and the remedies offered therein.

While there are limitations to these, they escape the scope of this answer.

Copyright violations have a three-year statute of limitations [ref]. After that, the infraction is no longer actionable. So your claim that seizure and destruction may happen decades later requires a real-world example.

Without such a contract, there are some rights granted to the buyer implied in the UCC. Most notably, the right to display, modify, and dispose of the item bought. This includes selling the item. In this case, the item could be sold to Steve with no problem.

This does not mean one can make copies of a poster without violating copyright. But they can surely cut up the poster and glue the physical pieces in another art installment, of which no copies can be made without the original copyright owner's permission.

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The customer can only make copies if they have permission from the copyright owner. As owner, you can simply grant permission, and give the customer permission to make a copy (a bare license), or you can make your agreement contain the elements of a contract, namely consideration. Money is a common thing of value, but the courts also accept things like love, devotion and advertising goodwill as things of value, which can put your "license" agreement (the agreement part) into the realm of a contract.

Contracts are by nature conditional: I do X if you do Y. If I do not do X, then they do not have to do Y. So if I promise not to sell to Steve yet do so, I have breached the contract, and they do not have to permit me to make a copy. Whether or not the courts would accept your argument depends among other things on the wording of your agreement (the conditions should be clear, not vaguely inferrable from what you actually say).

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    The courts do not accept love or devotion as consideration for contracts. Advertising and goodwill (in the specific sense of business goodwill, not in the general sense of feeling well disposed towards someone) are fine.
    – Dale M ♦
    Commented Jan 18 at 20:34
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Rights once granted cannot be revoked, but it is possible to write in the license that you reserve the right to revoke the permission under certain circumstances. Assuming you have complete ownership of your work, you can put any requirements, except if universally illegal (like racial discrimination, for instance).

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  • Rights once granted cannot be revoked Sweet summer child, that is wrong. There are plenty ways to revoke rights granted.
    – Trish
    Commented Jan 20 at 16:46
  • Rights of the software licenses at least I am more aware of cannot be revoked. Once the program has been released under GPL or the like, it cannot be said: "we do not longer allow to use or share it". This is fundamental concept; all ecosystem of the open source would not be possible without this. If there is a willingness to revoke the rights, this must be reserved in advance inside the text of the license.
    – Stančikas
    Commented Jan 20 at 17:59
  • that is only true for a very minor number of licenses. Most licenses include specific "if you do this, you lose your license" clauses
    – Trish
    Commented Jan 20 at 18:11
  • But this is exactly what I want to say.
    – Stančikas
    Commented Jan 20 at 20:40
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    "Once the program has been released under GPL or the like, it cannot be said: "we do not longer allow to use or share it". This is fundamental concept; all ecosystem of the open source would not be possible without this": the open source ecosystem exists because clever people who wanted to create the ecosystem took some care to devise irrevocable licenses. It is an explicit feature of those licenses, not an intrinsic default property of licenses in general.
    – phoog
    Commented Jan 21 at 1:59

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