Corporate Counsel Daily, Proposed ART Act would bring visual artists royalties on professional resale, (Jun 24, 2025)

By Steven Melendez

The bill was introduced with support from a range of arts organizations.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) introduced a bill that would guarantee artists royalties upon resale of their work by "art market professionals" for at least $5,000.

The proposed law, which would be titled the American Royalties Too (ART) Act, would provide for artists to receive the lesser amount of 5% of the resale price or $50,000. The latter amount would be adjusted annually for inflation.

The right to resale exists as part of the copyright regime in more than 105 countries, including all of the European Union, but not in the United States, according to a statement from Nadler, who is ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust.

The right would also help bring parity with other types of creative workers, like musicians who receive royalties when songs are played and authors who receive royalty on continued sales of their books, according to Nadler. It would ensure an artist would profit if a work continues to increase in value after the artist initially sells it.

"I firmly believe that the time has come for us to establish a resale royalty right here in the United States," he said. "By adopting a resale royalty, the United States would join the rest of the world in recognizing this important right and ensuring visual artists and creators share in the proceeds from the sale of their works. The ART act would ensure that American artists benefit whenever and wherever their works are sold, whether in New York, London, or Paris.”

The bill is cosponsored by Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.). It has also won support from a number of creators' rights organizations, including the Artists Rights Society, the Association of Medical Illustrators, the International Authors Forum, the Authors Guild, the Songwriters Guild of America, Society of Composers & Lyricists, and the American Society of Collective Rights Licensing Inc.

The royalties would be collected and administered by a set of visual artists' collecting societies, designated under a process to be created by the Register of Copyrights. The Register of Copyrights would also determine how those societies could be compensated out of the collected funds for their efforts and how they could obtain sale price information from art market professionals.

The societies would also be able to bring lawsuits in federal court to recover royalties from art market professionals who fail to pay. If they failed to do so within a year, artists themselves would be able to sue for up to three years after the royalties were due, collecting up to three times the amount of the royalty as well as attorney fees.

The bill specifies that the right to royalties would last as long as existing copyright rights and provides provisions for inheritance of the right if successors aren't named in an artist's will.

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