Terms Used In Rhode Island General Laws > Chapter 5-62 - Works of Art - Artists' Rights

• Amendment: A proposal to alter the text of a pending bill or other measure by striking out some of it, by inserting new language, or both. Before an amendment becomes part of the measure, thelegislature must agree to it.
• art merchant: includes an auctioneer who sells art works at public auction, and except in the case of multiples, includes persons, not otherwise defined or treated as art merchants in this section, who are consignors or principals of auctioneers. See Rhode Island General Laws 5-62-2
• Artist: means the creator of a work of fine art or, in the case of multiples, the person who conceived or created the image, that is contained in or constitutes the master from which the individual print was made. See Rhode Island General Laws 5-62-2
• Assets: (1) The property comprising the estate of a deceased person, or (2) the property in a trust account.
• Attachment: A procedure by which a person's property is seized to pay judgments levied by the court.
• authorship: refers to the creator of a work of fine art or multiple or to the period, culture, source, or origin, as the case may be, with which the creation of that work is identified in the description of the work. See Rhode Island General Laws 5-62-2
• Certificate of authenticity: means a written statement by an art merchant confirming, approving, or attesting to the authorship of a work of fine art or multiple, which is capable of being used to the advantage or disadvantage of some person. See Rhode Island General Laws 5-62-2
• Commercial agricultural producers: means purveyors of at least two thousand five hundred dollars ($2,500) of agricultural products during a calendar year. See Rhode Island General Laws 46-15.3-4
• Complaint: A written statement by the plaintiff stating the wrongs allegedly committed by the defendant.
• Conservation: means acts taken to correct deterioration and alteration and acts taken to prevent, stop, or retard deterioration. See Rhode Island General Laws 5-62-2
• Contract: A legal written agreement that becomes binding when signed.
• Conviction: A judgement of guilt against a criminal defendant.
• Corporation: A legal entity owned by the holders of shares of stock that have been issued, and that can own, receive, and transfer property, and carry on business in its own name.
• Counterfeit: means a work of fine art or multiple made, altered, or copied, with or without intent to deceive, in any manner that it appears or is claimed to have an authorship that it does not in fact possess. See Rhode Island General Laws 5-62-2
• Craft: means a functional or nonfunctional work individually designed and crafted by hand in any medium, including, but not limited to: textile, tile, paper, clay, glass, fiber, wood, metal, or plastic; provided, that if produced in multiples, craft does not include works mass produced or produced in other than a limited edition. See Rhode Island General Laws 5-62-2
• Creditors: means "creditor" as defined in the Uniform Commercial Code, § 6A-1-201(13). See Rhode Island General Laws 5-62-2
• Damages: Money paid by defendants to successful plaintiffs in civil cases to compensate the plaintiffs for their injuries.
• Defendant: In a civil suit, the person complained against; in a criminal case, the person accused of the crime.
• Discovery: Lawyers' examination, before trial, of facts and documents in possession of the opponents to help the lawyers prepare for trial.
• Equitable: Pertaining to civil suits in "equity" rather than in "law." In English legal history, the courts of "law" could order the payment of damages and could afford no other remedy. See damages. A separate court of "equity" could order someone to do something or to cease to do something. See, e.g., injunction. In American jurisprudence, the federal courts have both legal and equitable power, but the distinction is still an important one. For example, a trial by jury is normally available in "law" cases but not in "equity" cases. ^{Source: U.S. Courts}
• Evidence: Information presented in testimony or in documents that is used to persuade the fact finder (judge or jury) to decide the case for one side or the other.
• Executor: A male person named in a will to carry out the decedent
• Fee simple: Absolute title to property with no limitations or restrictions regarding the person who may inherit it.
• Fiduciary: A trustee, executor, or administrator.
• Fiscal year: The fiscal year is the accounting period for the government. For the federal government, this begins on October 1 and ends on September 30. The fiscal year is designated by the calendar year in which it ends; for example, fiscal year 2006 begins on October 1, 2005 and ends on September 30, 2006.
• fund: means the water quality protection funds as described in § 46-15. See Rhode Island General Laws 46-15.3-4
• in writing: include printing, engraving, lithographing, and photo-lithographing, and all other representations of words in letters of the usual form. See Rhode Island General Laws 43-3-16
• Indemnification: In general, a collateral contract or assurance under which one person agrees to secure another person against either anticipated financial losses or potential adverse legal consequences. ^{Source: FDIC}
• Jurisdiction: (1) The legal authority of a court to hear and decide a case. Concurrent jurisdiction exists when two courts have simultaneous responsibility for the same case. (2) The geographic area over which the court has authority to decide cases.
• Leakage: means the difference between non-billed water and the total of the estimated or measured allowances for fire fighting, meter inaccuracy, theft, system usage, main flushing, sewer cleaning, storm drain cleaning, and other allowances that may be developed by the water resources board. See Rhode Island General Laws 46-15.3-4
• Lease: A contract transferring the use of property or occupancy of land, space, structures, or equipment in consideration of a payment (e.g., rent). ^{Source: OCC}
• Liabilities: The aggregate of all debts and other legal obligations of a particular person or legal entity.
• Lien: A claim against real or personal property in satisfaction of a debt.
• Limited edition: means works of art produced from a master, all of which are the same image and bear numbers or other markings to denote the limited production of the work to a stated maximum number of multiples, or are otherwise held out as limited to a maximum number of multiples. See Rhode Island General Laws 5-62-2
• Master: when used alone, is used in lieu of and means the same as such things as printing plate, stone, block, screen, photographic negative, or other like material that contains an image used to produce visual art objects in multiples, or in the case of sculptures, a mold, model, cast, form, or other prototype, other than from glass, from which additional multiples of sculpture are produced, fabricated, or carved. See Rhode Island General Laws 5-62-2
• multiples: means prints, photographs, positive or negative, sculpture, and similar art objects produced in more than one copy and sold, offered for sale, or consigned in, into, or from this state for an amount in excess of one hundred dollars ($100), exclusive of any frame, or in the case of sculpture, an amount in excess of fifteen hundred dollars ($1,500). See Rhode Island General Laws 5-62-2
• Non-billed water: means the difference between water produced by a supplier and water sold by the same supplier. See Rhode Island General Laws 46-15.3-4
• Obligation: An order placed, contract awarded, service received, or similar transaction during a given period that will require payments during the same or a future period.
• On consignment: means that no title to, estate in, or right to possession of the work of fine art or multiple that is superior to that of the cosigner vests in the cosignee, notwithstanding the cosignee's power or authority to transfer or convey all the right, title, and interest of the cosignor, in and to such work, to a third person. See Rhode Island General Laws 5-62-2
• Partnership: A voluntary contract between two or more persons to pool some or all of their assets into a business, with the agreement that there will be a proportional sharing of profits and losses.
• Person: means an individual, partnership, corporation, association, or other group, however organized. See Rhode Island General Laws 5-62-2
• person: may be construed to extend to and include co-partnerships and bodies corporate and politic. See Rhode Island General Laws 43-3-6
• Personal property: All property that is not real property.
• Plaintiff: The person who files the complaint in a civil lawsuit.
• Precedent: A court decision in an earlier case with facts and law similar to a dispute currently before a court. Precedent will ordinarily govern the decision of a later similar case, unless a party can show that it was wrongly decided or that it differed in some significant way.
• Prosecute: To charge someone with a crime. A prosecutor tries a criminal case on behalf of the government.
• Quorum: The number of legislators that must be present to do business.
• Raw water: means water in its natural state prior to any treatment. See Rhode Island General Laws 46-15.3-4
• real estate: may be construed to include lands, tenements, and hereditaments and rights thereto and interests therein. See Rhode Island General Laws 43-3-10
• Remainder: An interest in property that takes effect in the future at a specified time or after the occurrence of some event, such as the death of a life tenant.
• Reproduction: means a copy, in any medium, of a work of fine art that is displayed or published under circumstances that, reasonably construed, evinces an intent that it be taken as a representation of a work of fine art as created by the artist. See Rhode Island General Laws 5-62-2
• Sale: means all retail sales of potable water to end users for any purpose in the ordinary course of business by a supplier, except for sales exempt pursuant to § 46-15. See Rhode Island General Laws 46-15.3-4
• Sculpture: means a three-dimensional fine-art object produced, fabricated, or carved in multiple from a mold, model, cast, form, or other prototype, other than from glass, sold, offered for sale, or consigned in, into, or from this state for an amount in excess of fifteen hundred dollars ($1,500). See Rhode Island General Laws 5-62-2
• seal: shall be construed to include an impression of the seal made with or without the use of wax or wafer on the paper. See Rhode Island General Laws 43-3-15
• Signed: means autographed by the artist's own hand, and not by mechanical means of reproduction, after the multiple was produced, whether or not the master was signed or unsigned. See Rhode Island General Laws 5-62-2
• Source: means the raw water upon which a public water supply system abounds, and refers to both groundwater and surface water. See Rhode Island General Laws 46-15.3-4
• Statute: A law passed by a legislature.
• town: may be construed to include city; the words "town council" include city council; the words "town clerk" include city clerk; the words "ward clerk" include clerk of election district; the words "town treasurer" include city treasurer; and the words "town sergeant" include city sergeant. See Rhode Island General Laws 43-3-9
• Uniform Commercial Code: A set of statutes enacted by the various states to provide consistency among the states' commercial laws. It includes negotiable instruments, sales, stock transfers, trust and warehouse receipts, and bills of lading. ^{Source: OCC}
• United States: include the several states and the territories of the United States. See Rhode Island General Laws 43-3-8
• Verdict: The decision of a petit jury or a judge.
• Watersheds: means those land areas which, because of their topography, soil type, and drainage patterns, act as collectors of raw waters which replenish or regorge existing or planned public drinking water supplies. See Rhode Island General Laws 46-15.3-4
• Work of fine art: means any original work of visual or graphic art of any medium that includes, but is not limited to, the following: painting; drawing; print; photographic print; or sculpture of a limited edition of no more than three hundred (300) copies; provided, that "work of fine art" does not include sequential imagery such as that in motion pictures. See Rhode Island General Laws 5-62-2
• Written instrument: means a written or printed agreement, bill of sale, invoice, certificate of authenticity, catalogue, or any other written or printed note or memorandum or label describing the work of fine art or multiple that is to be sold, exchanged, or cosigned by an art merchant. See Rhode Island General Laws 5-62-2