Art Copyright
House of Arts shows work by Aditya Kumar and by independent artists, curators and hosts who publish through the platform. Copyright in each work belongs to the person who made it. This page explains who owns what, what you may do with a work you have bought, how permission is obtained for anything else, and how to report an infringement.
1. Who owns what on this site
Three different owners appear on these pages. Knowing which you are looking at tells you who to ask.
Work by Aditya Kumar
Paintings, drawings, photographs and prints made by the founder. Copyright is his, and licence enquiries come to us.
Work by platform artists
Everything listed by an independent artist. Copyright stays with that artist. We hold only a licence to show and promote it.
The site itself
Text, page design, layout, logos and our own photography. Copyright of House of Arts.
Where a listing was published by an independent artist, the artist's name appears on it. Nothing on this page transfers an artist's rights to us, and nothing we license can exceed what that artist has permitted.
2. The law that applies
Original artworks, drawings, photographs, prints, text and design on this site are protected under the Copyright Act, 1957 of India, and internationally under the Berne Convention, to which India and over 180 other countries are party.
Copyright arises automatically on creation. Registration is not required for protection, although selected works are registered with the Copyright Office, New Delhi.
Copyright in every work remains with its author unless transferred by a signed written assignment.
3. What you own when you buy a work
This is the point most often misunderstood, so we state it plainly.
When you buy an original painting or a signed print, you own that physical object. You do not acquire the copyright in the image.
You may keep the work, hang it, insure it, move it between your properties, lend it, gift it or resell it. You may not reproduce the image, because the right to make copies stays with the artist.
This is the ordinary position in law everywhere, and it is the same whether the work cost five thousand rupees or five lakh, and whether the artist is the founder or someone listing through the platform.
4. Moral rights
Under section 57 of the Copyright Act, 1957, the artist holds moral rights independently of who owns the work or the copyright. These rights cannot be assigned, and they continue even after copyright is transferred. They are:
- The right of attribution — to be identified as the author of the work.
- The right of integrity — to restrain or claim damages for any distortion, mutilation, modification or other derogatory treatment of the work that would harm the artist's honour or reputation.
In practice this means a work may not be cropped, overpainted, cut down, digitally altered, defaced or displayed in a way that misrepresents it, even by its owner. This applies equally to every artist on the platform.
5. Commissioned work
Section 17(b) of the Copyright Act provides that where a painting, portrait, photograph or engraving is made for valuable consideration at the instance of another person, that person is the first owner of copyright in the absence of an agreement to the contrary.
By commissioning work through House of Arts, you agree that copyright in the commissioned work remains with the artist who made it, and that you acquire ownership of the physical work only.
Where a client requires copyright or an exclusive licence in a commissioned work — for a brand, a book cover or a product, for example — this is available under a separate written assignment or licence, priced accordingly. Please raise it before the commission begins rather than afterwards.
Reference photographs you supply remain yours. You confirm that you own them or have permission to use them.
6. What you may do
| Use | Permitted |
|---|---|
| Display the work in your home, office or business premises | Yes |
| Photograph it for personal use | Yes |
| Share a photograph on social media with credit | Yes |
| Include it incidentally in an interior photograph of your space | Yes |
| Resell, gift or bequeath the physical work | Yes |
| Lend it for exhibition, with notice to the artist | Yes |
When crediting online, please name the artist and the gallery — for example Artwork by [artist name] · hoagallery.in — and tag @hoagalleryin where the platform allows.
7. What requires written permission
| Use | Status |
|---|---|
| Reproducing, printing, scanning or copying the image | Licence required |
| Using it in advertising, packaging or branding | Licence required |
| Merchandise — prints, cushions, apparel, stationery | Licence required |
| Book covers, editorial or publishing use | Licence required |
| Creating derivative or adapted works | Licence required |
| Altering, cropping or retouching the work | Prohibited — section 57 |
| Using images from this website for any purpose | Prohibited |
| Selling prints or copies of a work you own | Prohibited |
8. If you list work as an artist
You keep your copyright. Listing here changes nothing about who owns your work.
What you confirm when you publish
- The work is yours: you made it, and you hold the rights to sell and show it.
- It is not copied from, traced over, or derived from someone else's work, photograph or character without permission.
- Any reference photograph you worked from is yours, or used with permission.
- Work substantially generated by an AI tool is not accepted as original handmade art. If AI was used anywhere in your process, tell us before listing and we will tell you honestly whether it can be published and how it must be described.
The licence you give us
By publishing, you grant House of Arts a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to show and promote your listing — on the site, in our newsletter, on social media, in printed material and in press coverage — including cropped or resized images used for layout. This continues while the listing is published and, for archives and past-event records, for a reasonable period afterwards.
We do not sell, sub-licence or merchandise your work, and we do not grant anyone else the right to reproduce it. A commercial licence enquiry for your work is passed to you to decide.
Tell us. Where the copy is on this site we remove it, and repeatedly infringing accounts are closed. Where it is elsewhere, the claim is yours to bring, because the copyright is yours — but we will give you what we hold: listing dates, images as published, and a record of when the work first appeared here. That evidence of first publication is often what settles the matter.
9. If you host events or programmes
- You must hold the rights to every logo, artwork, photograph and sponsor mark you upload, and permission to show the work of any artist you feature.
- Naming a sponsor or using their logo requires their consent. We do not verify it, and it remains your responsibility.
- Photographs taken at your event are yours to use, subject to the privacy of the people in them. Tell attendees if an event will be photographed.
- The licence in section 8 applies to what you publish about an event, so we can show and promote it.
10. Artificial intelligence and data mining
No work on this website — by Aditya Kumar, by a platform artist, or by House of Arts — and no image, text or design on it, may be used to train, fine-tune, validate or otherwise develop any machine learning model, generative AI system or dataset, whether commercial or academic.
Automated scraping, crawling for dataset collection, and text and data mining of this website are prohibited. This reservation is made expressly, worldwide, by House of Arts for its own content and on behalf of the artists who publish here.
11. Licensing
Commercial use is available under licence. We license readily and at fair rates — the purpose of this page is clarity, not obstruction.
A licence will specify the permitted use, media, territory, duration, exclusivity and fee. Where the work is by a platform artist, we put the request to them and they decide; the fee is theirs.
To enquire, write to order@hoagallery.in with the work, the intended use, where it will appear, and for how long.
12. Resale right
Under section 53A of the Copyright Act, 1957, the author of an original painting, sculpture or drawing retains a right to a share in the resale price where a work is resold for more than ten thousand rupees. This right applies to resales of original works and is capped as provided under the Act.
If you resell a work, please notify us so the artist can be told. We do not obstruct resale, and a record of provenance benefits the value of the work you are selling.
13. How long copyright lasts
Under section 22 of the Copyright Act, copyright in artistic works subsists for the lifetime of the artist plus sixty years, counted from the beginning of the calendar year following the year of death. Moral rights under section 57 continue beyond that period and may be exercised by the artist's legal representatives.
14. Website content
All text, product descriptions, page design, layout and House of Arts photography on hoagallery.in are copyright of House of Arts. Copying this content, in whole or in part, for use on another website or in print, is an infringement and will be pursued.
15. Reporting infringement
This covers both directions: our work copied elsewhere, and your work copied onto this site by someone else.
Write to the Grievance Officer with:
- identification of the work you claim is infringed;
- the exact URL of the material on this site;
- proof of your ownership — an earlier publication, the original file, or a registration;
- your contact details and a statement made in good faith.
Grievance Officer: Aditya Kumar Email: order@hoagallery.in Phone: +91 85660 15214 Address: #915, TDI City, Sector 117, Mohali, Punjab 160055
Complaints are acknowledged within 48 hours and acted on within 36 hours of verification, in accordance with the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines) Rules, 2021 and rule 75 of the Copyright Rules, 2013.
An account that repeatedly publishes work it does not own is suspended, and its listings removed.
16. If your listing is removed
We tell you why, and what was claimed. If you believe the claim is wrong, reply with your evidence — the original photograph, working files, dated progress images, or a prior publication — and we will restore the listing where the evidence supports you.
Where ownership is genuinely disputed between two people, we are not a court. The listing stays down while the two of you resolve it, which protects whoever turns out to be right.
17. Enforcement
Infringement under the Copyright Act, 1957 carries civil remedies including injunction, damages and an account of profits, and criminal penalties under section 63.
We monitor for unauthorised use of our own work and act on it. Where use appears innocent, we will normally ask first and licence retrospectively. Where it is deliberate or commercial, we will not.
18. Photographs of people and places
Photographic works may include identifiable people, private property or protected monuments. Buying a print does not grant any right of publicity, personality or property in what is depicted, and any commercial use of such images requires separate clearances that are your responsibility to obtain.
Artists and hosts publishing photographs of identifiable people must have their permission to do so.
19. Contact
House of Arts — Aditya Kumar Email: order@hoagallery.in Phone: +91 85660 15214 Address: #915, TDI City, Sector 117, Mohali, Punjab 160055, India
This page sits alongside our Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policy and Returns Policy pages.
© Aditya Kumar and the respective artists. All rights reserved. Unauthorised reproduction prohibited.