Exhibit and sell your work
Selling the object is not selling the copyright, and the commission clause decides who owned it in the first place.
What reaches you, and in what order
Copyright Act 1987
Act 332Selling the physical work is not selling the copyright, and s.25 moral rights survive the sale. The trap is s.26(2): commissioned work and work made in the course of employment moves ownership unless you contract out of it, and almost nobody does.
Contracts Act 1950
Act 136Consignment, commission percentage, insurance while held, and what happens when the gallery closes owing you for sold work.
Industrial Designs Act 1996
Act 552If you industrially produce and market articles made to your own artistic work, section 13B limits copyright in that work to twenty-five years from the end of the year the articles are first marketed. And if the design is registered under industrial design law, section 7(5) removes copyright in it altogether. Registration under this Act is the protection designers are meant to be relying on, and they fall into this gap constantly.
Consumer Protection Act 1999
Act 599You are a seller. Implied guarantees, misleading conduct and the Tribunal for Consumer Claims all apply, and the Tribunal is cheap enough to be used against you.
Stamp Act 1949
Act 378Stamp within thirty days of execution. Late stamping costs you the unpaid duty plus, under s.47A, RM50 or ten per cent of the deficient duty (whichever is greater) if you fix it within three months of the deadline, and RM100 or twenty per cent (whichever is greater) after that. Since 1 January 2026 most arts agreements fall in Phase 1 of the stamp duty self-assessment system, which means you assess and pay through MyTax yourself and can be audited on it afterwards. LHDN has waived certain 2026 penalties for getting the self-assessed return wrong, but that waiver does not touch late stamping, so an old unstamped agreement is still a full-penalty problem.
National Heritage Act 2005
Act 645Heritage objects can be caught on export without anyone realising they were listed, and declaration constrains what an owner may do with their own property.
Personal Data Protection Act 2010
Act 709Filming the room means processing other people's personal data. Since 1 June 2025 you must notify the Commissioner of a personal data breach as soon as practicable and no later than 72 hours after it happens, and then tell the affected people within 7 days of notifying the Commissioner where the breach causes or is likely to cause them significant harm. Note the trigger: the 72 hours runs from the breach happening, not from you finding out about it, and if you miss it you have to give the Commissioner a written explanation with supporting evidence. There is no size threshold on that duty. The data protection officer duty is different: it only bites if you process the personal data of 20,000 or more people, the sensitive personal data of 10,000 or more, or your core activity is regular and systematic monitoring. Almost no individual artist will reach that.
Income Tax Act 1967
Act 53** `Whether your sales are taxable business income does not depend on what you call yourself. LHDN looks at how you actually operate: how often you sell, whether you buy to resell, how you market, and how long you hold work before selling it. Lawyers call these the badges of trade.
Section 26(2) is the clause that quietly transfers ownership of commissioned work. Read it before you accept the commission, not after you see it reprinted.
Related situations
Paint a mural or install work in public space
Your copyright survives on someone else's wall. What the owner may then do to it is the fight.…
ScenarioSell merch, prints or downloads online
The moment you take money online you are a seller, and there is a disclosure rule almost no artist store compl…
ScenarioArchive, conserve or exhibit heritage material
Listing constrains the owner, export catches the unaware, and copyright outlives everyone who could give permi…
This page is published by ALIM (Art × Law Initiative Malaysia) as general legal information for Malaysia’s creative communities. It is not legal advice. It does not take your circumstances into account, and reading it does not create a solicitor-client relationship with ALIM or with anyone associated with it.
The law changes. Each Act reproduced here is the Attorney General’s Chambers’ consolidated reprint and carries the date it was consolidated to; amendments made after that date do not appear in the text, and the authoritative version of any Malaysian law is the one published in the Federal Gazette. Subsidiary legislation, state enactments and local authority by-laws may also apply to your situation and are largely outside this library.
Please do not act, or decide not to act, on the strength of this page alone. Take advice from an advocate and solicitor on your own facts. To the extent permitted by law, ALIM and its contributors accept no liability for any loss arising from reliance on this page.
If you have a live problem, talk to us. It is free and confidential.