An alleged graffiti artist has appeared in court to face 29 charges of criminal damage.

Kevin Mason, 30, of Devonshire Place, Brighton, is alleged to have caused more than £1,500 of damage to buildings near his home in the city's Kemp Town district between January 1 and December 12, 2004.

Mason's home was searched after he was arrested and drawings of the "fugi" tag found on pieces of paper matched graffiti on buildings in the area, prosecutor Jane Heybroek told Worthing magistrates yesterday.

Paul Hull, an enforcement manager for Brighton and Hove City Council, deals with illegal fly-posting and graffiti in the city.

He told the court a tag was like a signature and would be unlikely to be copied by anybody else.

After looking at photos of the "fugi" tag and comparing each, he concluded they had all be written by the same person.

He said: "The whole idea of copying someone else's tag is quite abhorrent to graffiti artists."

But defence solicitor Richard Elliott said a graffiti artist called Dondi White had sometimes swapped tags with another artist he knew.

He said: "Here we have an example of two other graffiti artists not only doing a piece of someone else's work but tagging it with their name."

Neil Harvey, a sergeant with Northumbria police who has done a lot of work with graffiti artists in the North-East, said they could become psychologically addicted to what they were doing.

He said an artist would practise their tag and experiment with variations before going out and spraying it on to a wall.

To go out and paint without having perfected the tag would lower an artist's credibility among his peers and it would be unlikely they would want to do that.

Mr Harvey said: "This is someone who has just started in the sub-culture. In theory what this person is doing is marking their own territory.

"Most writers who are starting out will tag near their own homes under cover of darkness because they feel it is safer and they can get home easily."

He said he believed the drawings found at Mason's home matched the tags on the walls in Brighton.

Harvey denies all charges.

The case continues.