597.740 - Restrictions on publication and public display; civil remedy; defacement, mutilation or alteration of work.

597.740  Restrictions on publication and public display; civil remedy; defacement, mutilation or alteration of work.

      1.  Except as otherwise provided in subsection 3, if damage to the reputation of an artist is reasonably foreseeable, a person shall not, without the consent of that artist, publish or display in public, in this state, the artist’s work of art or a reproduction of the artist’s work of art, in a defaced, mutilated or altered form and represent it as the work of the artist.

      2.  An artist who is injured by a violation of subsection 1 may bring an action for damages, together with reasonable attorney’s fees and the costs of the action as are authorized under NRS 18.110.

      3.  Defacement, mutilation or alteration of a work of art which is caused by the passage of time or the inherent nature of the materials used in the creation of the work of art does not give an artist the right to disclaim authorship pursuant to NRS 597.730 or a cause of action under subsection 2, unless the defacement, mutilation or alteration of the work of art is the result of negligent conservation. For the purposes of this subsection, “conservation” means those acts taken to preserve and protect a work of art or to slow its deterioration.

      4.  A change in a work of art that is an ordinary result of a medium of reproduction does not constitute defacement, mutilation or alteration.

      (Added to NRS by 1989, 193)—(Substituted in revision for NRS 598.974)