Policy · Updated 17 July 2026
Copyright & public domain
Our entire business rests on getting this right, so here is exactly how we handle it.
What we sell
Every artwork we reproduce is one whose copyright has expired and which has passed into the public domain. We do not sell reproductions of works by living artists, and we do not sell works still under copyright anywhere we trade.
Why "it's public domain" is not the end of the question
An artwork being out of copyright does not automatically make a particularfile of it safe to sell. Three things complicate it:
- Copyright terms differ by country. A work in the public domain in the United States may still be protected elsewhere. We assess status against the markets we actually sell into.
- The scan may carry its own claims. Some institutions assert rights over their photographs of public-domain works, or attach terms to their downloads. The painting being free does not make every photograph of it free.
- Platforms make their own calls. A marketplace can remove a listing on a rights complaint regardless of the underlying legal position, and their decision is the one that governs our shop.
Our copyright gate
Because of the above, public-domain status is confirmed before any high-resolution file is allowed into production. In practice:
- Review happens on low-resolution proofs. A production-grade file is only generated for works that have already cleared.
- Licence and public-domain status are checked against Wikimedia Commons and the source archive's own terms.
- A person makes the final call. Automated identification supports that decision; it does not make it.
- Decisions are recorded centrally, so a work that caused a problem once cannot quietly reappear in a later batch.
That record is fed by real outcomes, not theory. Works have been removed from our shops before, and each removal became a permanent entry — the reason we know where the edges are is that we have found some of them.
What we do claim
The underlying artworks belong to everyone. What belongs to us is the work we put in on top: the restoration, the colour and damage correction, the print preparation, the photography and mockups, the written descriptions, and the software that produces all of it. Those are our own and are not licensed for reuse.
We make no claim of authorship over any original artwork, and we do not represent restored works as our own creations.
If you believe we have made a mistake
If you hold rights in a work you believe we are reproducing without authority, write to contact@gemarkt.comwith the listing and the basis of your claim. We will take the listing down while we look into it rather than after. We would rather lose a listing than argue about one.
This page describes our operating practice. It is not legal advice and it is not a legal opinion on any particular work.