You, as a private or commercial buyer, have unlimited and lifetime use of all images on this website without paying royalty or licensing fees to Restored Traditions LC, their partners or affiliates.

Examples of procedures you can use these images for without paying royalty or licensing fees are (but are not limited to) national and international advertising campaigns, corporate logos, public-relations campaigns, commercial and personal web design, greeting card lines, book covers, banners, posters, prints, coffee mugs, t-shirts, e-cards, templates, decals, stickers, educational purposes, crafts, CDs and DVDs, collages, sales promotions, selling to others as downloads etc.

The value of what we offer is the convenience to access this collection of religious artwork under one roof – offered in varying degrees of high resolution. Every scanned or photographed image we offer is digitally remastered, as needed, but not substantially altered. We strive to offer the highest quality in Sacred Art without drastically altering the power and effect of the original painting, etching, engraving, woodblock print or photograph. In order to continue this mission, we price our religious art for download accordingly.

 

Virtually all images on our website are in the public domain. Some images are priced significantly more due to the amount of digital restoration and enhancement that went into them – making them exclusive to our site. Understand that our mission is to deliver Catholic art to all at the highest level of artistic quality and customer satisfaction. We simply charge a download fee so that we can continue our mission professionally and full time.

 

Further Explanation of ‘in the Public Domain’

If a work falls into the Public Domain, it means that anyone can use it for anything without any worry of copyright infringement. Anything published before 1923 is automatically in the Public Domain. Anything published between 1923 and 1977 is also in the Public Domain, if the copyrights were not renewed or if there were no copyrights published on the work. A study from the United States Copyright Office in 1961 revealed that fewer than 15% of copyrights were renewed between 1923 and 1961.

 

Many people understand this, but many more people worry that photographs of public-domain paintings can be copyrighted by the photographer. True, one cannot copyright a work by Leonardo da Vinci, but cannot the professional photograph of a da Vinci painting be copyrighted? The exquisitely short answer is no under certain conditions.

 

Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999) ruled that a ‘slavish copy’ of a public-domain work cannot be copyrighted because a ‘slavish copy’ does not demonstrate the original creativity that copyright law protects. This ruling applies especially to two-dimensional images. In the case of photographing public-domain sculpture, this ruling does not hold as much weight because there possibly could exist an amount of original creativity that goes into photographing a statue from a particular angle with particular lighting etc.

 

Meshwerks, Inc. v. Toyota, 528 F3d 1258 (10th Circuit, 2008) ruled that the makers of a digital model of something in the public domain (a Toyota car in this case) whose ‘intent was to replicate, as exactly as possible, the image of certain Toyota vehicles’ did not demonstrate the degree of originality to be protected by Copyright law.

 

The public-domain and court ruling information on this page are primarily pertinent to the product sold on this Website. There are other discrepancies to Copyright Law, which we encourage you to investigate at the United States Copyright Office.

 

Thank you so much for your understanding and cooperation.

God Bless you!