Guild Advocacy

What Does This Mean?

Let’s turn to the dictionary:
An advocate is:

One who pleads the cause of another
One who defends or maintains a cause or proposal
One who supports or promotes the interests of another

The Guild Is Your Advocate.

The Guild works to raise industry standards, and improve the ability of visual artists to enjoy satisfying and rewarding careers.

It is so darn easy to copyright your work, you’d be nuts to pay someone else to do it.

A number of copyright registration “services” and creation “date certification services” have sprung up around the US and online, offering to register your work for you. They just want your money and provide no benefit. Click here to download the pdf to copyright your own work.

Are you a closet lawyer? Interested in your legal rights?

The Graphic Artists Guild Advocacy Committee wants you! If you’re a Guild member, drop our Advocacy Chair, Lisa Shaftel an email and let her know that you’re interested. Feel free to bring something to the table.

How the Guild’s Advocacy Committee Helps You:

1. Grievance Committee – Your first step to solving problems
The Guild exists to make sure you’re treated fairly and ethically at work. The Grievance Committee (also known as the Professional Practices Committee) takes a look at your grievance, suggests possible solutions, and, if appropriate, intervenes on your behalf. We’ve been very successful in this. If the Guild can’t resolve the situation by ourselves, we help you find a legal solution, including mediation and arbitration.

The Grievance Committee also knows about commonly occurring situations and how to solve them, so, we can, often, cut to the chase. Sometimes, this knowledge alone is enough to persuade companies to fix what’s wrong. We simply explain what’s happened elsewhere and how it was resolved and they comply.

How the grievance committee works:
First, contact the Guild’s National Office and ask for a Grievance Application, which includes forms that describe and document the dispute and identify what you want to have happen. It’s critical that you organize everything related to your case. Keep copies of all documents and correspondence so you have a paper trail of whatever happened. The Grievance Committee will review your case and, then decide whether you have a case and the evidence you need to support it. Then we get to work to fix the situation.

Ok, that didn’t work. Now what?
We Bring in the Suits – the Legal Referral Network

The Guild has a national network of lawyers who are expert in the issues we most commonly face: copyright and intellectual property, contract negotiations, Internet issues, licensing, royalties, and collections. As Associate Members of the Guild, we keep them up-to-date on all the legal issues we follow.

We can e-mail or snail mail you a copy of our favorite lawyers in your area. Please forward your requests to the Guild.

Note: We suggest that you discuss fees with the attorney before you accept advice or assistance. Only you can decide if the attorney is appropriate for your situation. The Guild will not interfere in the attorney/client relationship, and are not responsible for the lawyer or his/her fees.

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* Consult our website or plan contracts for actual terms, coverage, amounts, conditions, and exclusions. The information contained in this article is for illustrative purposes only and is not a contract. It is intended to provide a general overview of plan coverage.

For additional information and to become a member visit: www.prepaidlegal.com/info/michaelbornia

For a copy of the Code of Fair Practice for the Graphic Communications Industry, click here.

Copyright Information

Here are links to a bunch of organizations involved in all the copyright issues we face.

The U.S. Copyright Office
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
The Library of Congress
Trademark Law Materials from Cornell Law School
US Supreme Court Intellectual Property Decisions
Copyright Clearance Center
Internet Law Simplified
Law for Internet
Copyright Information for Children