And the moral of the story is...

Moral rights provide the author of a copyright work with various additional rights, such as the right to be identified as the author, and the right to prevent derogatory treatment of the work. Reported cases concerning moral rights are limited, often because the remedies available do not add to those which can be recovered from a successful copyright infringement claim. However, a recent Canadian case is an example of where moral rights can play an important role where copyright infringement is not available, namely where the work is destroyed or modified (rather than it having been reproduced)( 2025 QCCQ 3060 (CanLII) | Bachand v. Mural | CanLII). 

The artist in that case successfully sued the organisation which contracted with them to create a mural on the side of a building when they discovered six years later that the mural had been largely covered up when a building was constructed adjacent to the wall bearing the mural. Obliteration of most of the mural amounted to the Canadian law’s equivalent of “derogatory treatment” under the UK Act. Garden designers have also successfully sued where their gardens have been altered without their consent.

Moral rights cannot be assigned, but can be passed on through testamentary disposition following the death of the author. We were involved in a case where the estate of a well-known artist relied on his moral rights when copies of some of his works were used to decorate the interior of a chain of restaurants.

They can, however, be waived, so the moral of the story is always to seek a waiver of moral rights at the outset when contracting with an artist where you need control over the future use, maintenance or modification of their work. This would apply, for example, to property owners commissioning the installation of a statue in their grounds.

Some readers may recall the alterations made by an 81 year old parishioner to a fresco of Jesus in a Spanish church in an attempt to restore it. No moral rights claim would have been available to the estate of the artist in that case as his copyright had expired, but interestingly, by altering the artwork the parishioner appears to have successfully laid claim to her own copyright and moral rights in the work, as Wikipedia names her as a co-author and reports that she received a 49% share of the profits from merchandise (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecce_Homo_(Garc%C3%ADa_Mart%C3%ADnez_and_Gim%C3%A9nez).