The duly noted® blog

Who owns copyright

The copyright owner is the person or persons who created the work that is copyrighted. You might well have guessed that already.

Under copyright law then, creatives are usually the first person(s) granted ownership of copyright over the work they‟ve created(11), as outlined above. So if you‟re someone who‟s created a copyrighted work, the rights of ownership to that copyrighted work belong to none other… than you.

Let‟s be clear about this; no-one else but you, the creator of the copyrighted work, has these rights; not your mum, your partner, not nice Mrs Miggins down the road. (Yes, not even her either.) They‟re yours and yours alone (unless the created work has been a collaborative effort(12)). Exclusively. Nor will those rights be anyone else‟s unless and until you as the rights owner (sometimes called “rights holder” too) grants permission of usage – licenses – or gives away/sells – assigns – those rights.

Sounds good doesn‟t it?

Works for me.

Having said that though…

There‟s ownership and then there‟s Ownership

People can get the wrong end of the stick when they hear about copyright ownership, so I thought – now that‟d I‟ve identified what copyright ownership is – it‟d be worth clarifying what it isn’t. Now where you live you have products like DVDs, books and CDs all over, and you own them, right? I mean you paid good money for them, right? Sure you did. So you‟re their owner.

But does that mean you own the copyright subsisting in those products?

No, of course you don‟t.

It‟s the author and/or the publisher/distributor who retains the copyright. There‟s a difference then to owning a copy of a copyrightable work, and owning the copyright of that work itself. If you‟re forking out cash for, say a CD, you‟re buying ownership of that CD copy of that recording artist‟s album, not ownership of the master recordings themselves, nor the right to produce copies of the CD you purchased either.

Then there‟s being hired to produce some work.

Were you hired? Check your copyright!

We have all been employees, and many of us have been hired as freelancers. And in that time I guarantee you, we put something together, wrote or drew something for our employer. Does this mean according to what I‟ve outlined above that copyright became ours? Not necessarily.

You see, if we prepared this work as part of the duties of our employment, or if it was commissioned from us, if we‟re part of team employed on a project, or if in fact, we‟re building something under a “work made for hire” agreement, then in all likelihood the copyright will be our employer‟s, not ours.

So are you in employment right now and creating works the rights to which you assumed were yours? Then take a look at the employment contract you signed with your employer. There are likely to be provisions in there which cover this question of ownership. Or are you yourself commissioning work from others? Then look at the purchase orders you send out or agreements you sign. Are there clauses in the terms and conditions which cover intellectual property rights for people you hire, so that those rights are yours upon payment?

11 – The Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988, Chapter I, Subsistence, Ownership and Duration of Copyright, section 11
12 – If more than one author or creator has been involved in producing the work, then joint copyright ownership applies. Song writing partnerships are a classic example, wherein by virtue of having co-written a song, they each become the joint copyright owners.