Oh, so paying your print shop to make copies of your artwork gives them the right to reproduce and sell it? Cool, cool, cool.

But it obviously doesn’t. 

Life and law are sometimes pretty straightforward, even when it comes to messy, complex stuff like IP, because a written order for twenty-five prints on heavy paper means twenty-five prints. It doesn’t mean the shop can crop out the signature, hang the image by the register, and treat it like inventory.

That’s true for Massachusetts print and also pretty much any state and any shop.