Heavy metal meets artistic copyright: Originality and authorship of Venom’s images

On 31 July 2025, the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (IPEC) rendered a decision addressing authorship and copyright subsistence in a set of artworks created by members of the music band “Venom”, and photographs used on their album covers. The court found all the works in question to be original, attributing authorship of most to Mr Conrad Lant, rather than Mr Anthony Bray, who