Protecting her paintings

Linda Kegley wants people to laugh and have fun with her series of paintings called "Don't Drink Like a Fish."

But don't try to steal her idea. The Sebring artist holds a trademark - Registered No. 2,944,000 - for paintings and note cards with fish swimming in a glass as a common thread.

"With things on the Internet now, I mean you stand a risk if your stuff is out there that somebody is going to copy it and do a knockoff, so I am protected from that," Kegley said. "I would follow up on it if I thought someone had taken my idea."

Kegley said she thought she had a novel idea. While living in Punta Gorda in 2003, she began by doing a painting of a bar scene with a fish in it.

"The thing started evolving till I started doing so many that I was onto something," she said.

Linda said she became concerned about possibly violating a copyright because she started painting Van Gogh vodka bottles that had art on them.

"Jim contacted a patent attorney he knew in Cincinnati that had worked on a case with him," she said, referring to her husband. "They had a big chat about trademarks versus copyrights and all of that. He said what you should do is apply for a trademark for those fish in the glasses, so that's what we did."

Jim Kegley explained that a copyright is some type of written work and a trademark is a name associated with a product.

Jim Kegley, who is a retired lawyer, said if you have a trademark and someone is copying it directly, federal courts are "very quick" to issue an injunction preventing people from continuing to do it. The person who has a trademark can recover any profit made from the use of that trademark.

Linda noted they want to license some of the images to be used on things like cocktail napkins.

Jim Kegley said people can go through the application process themselves, but many go to a patent lawyer who can suggest things that a person might not be thinking about. It takes a year after filing and costs a couple hundred dollars.

"It does require a bit of research because you have to pick the right categories, and the patent office is a real stickler about dotting the i's and crossing the t's and all of that," Jim said. "It is a fairly involved process; it's not real easy to do."

Jennifer Unruh, a New York attorney who has counseled artists on copyright issues, said applying for trademarks is "not typically done" by artists.

Unruh said she understands Kegley's concern about someone taking her idea because it is a "very common problem" with an artist who has any medium on the Internet.

Linda just finished No. 95 in the series. She said she might stop the numbering at 100 but is not sure about that.

"As long as I have ideas swimming around in my head, I will continue to paint the fish," she said. "They're fun. It's an outlet that I'm enjoying doing. When I stop enjoying it then I will paint something else."

Linda said she has sold most of the originals in the series. She noted that she has done well selling prints. An example of that is "Highlands County Cowboy" - No. 84 in the series.

"It's a bluegill riding a seahorse in a glass of orange juice," she said. "I sold a lot of those prints here to people in the orange business or the grove business."

Linda and Jim operated LK Artworks in downtown Sebring for almost three years.

A health issue was part of the reason for closing the gallery. Linda said she had skin cancer in her eye lid and had to have plastic surgery last year.

"I'm OK and didn't lose my vision," she said. "I was laid up for two or three months."

Linda works out of a small studio in her Sun 'n Lake home. She said she might open another gallery.

"We loved doing that; it was fun," she said. "I loved doing the Gallery Walk. We had 200-300 people a month in our gallery. We would make our whole month on that night; it was great."