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purchasing a work of art usually does not give you the rights to reproduce the piece.

But purchasing the time for a person to create a work for you generally does give you the rights, as a work for hire. Thus temporary tattoos would be copyrightable, but permanent ones that are created only once should not.

> But purchasing the time for a person to create a work for you generally does give you the rights, as a work for hire

AFAIK, this still needs to be explicitly stated in the agreement/contract. by default the creator always owns the IP they create (in the US). this is why software companies have to explicitly state that they will own the product of your work when they hire you.

They could purchase the rights along with the tatoo, but in most cases likely haven’t.

As a developer I also have to have rights to code transferred to company in contract even though company pays me for that code. So you basically have to have contract for it, it is not by default you pay for it you own rights.

Though it is kind of funny when it goes for a tattoo, just never thought about it. It is not like you want to have contract for a tattoo unless you are LeBron...