[thelist] thelist] Is a copyright statement required?

James S. Huggins (Evolt) Evolt at ZName.com
Sat May 11 18:10:01 CDT 2002


==========================
BTW, I believe that if you accept money for a product that you deliver to
the payer - the copyright automatically transfers to them, unless they
specifically waive it in the original contract.
==========================


Actually, it is the other way around. It is yours, unless the contract gives
it away.


Here are the details.

Quoting the law from:
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#101

A "work made for hire" is-

(1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her
employment; or

(2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a
collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as
a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an
instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an
atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them
that the work shall be considered a work made for hire.
[end]



Option 1 means that if you are an employee, anything you do as an employee
does not belong to you.

Option 2 allows "work made for hire" provided (a) it is one of the specific
categories of works and (b) it is expressly agreed in a signed document that
it will be.


Note, for example, that songs can NOT be "works made for hire". The RIAA got
the law changed to permit that by sneaking in a small change. The backlash
caused it to be repealed later. Corporations would like for ALL works to be
possibly "work made for hire" for a variety of reasons. One of them is that
copyright "transfers" are not perpetual and authors can reclaim them.


Many businessmen think that when a graphics designer or web artist produces
a site and they pay for it that they are buying the copyright. In the
absence of a signed, written instrument expressly agreeing to that, they are
not.



See also
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html
"Who Can Claim Copyright"

And also
http://www.loc.gov/copyright/circs/circ09.pdf
Circular 9: Works Made for Hire



James S. Huggins




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