CONTENTS I. Introduction and statement of the problem.. II. Judicial development of the concept of joint authorship...- Page JOINT OWNERSHIP OF COPYRIGHTS I. INTRODUCTION AND STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM The problems of joint ownership to be considered in this study relate to the situation in which two or more persons together own the same right or rights in the same work. In this situation, a single copyright (or a particular property right comprised therein) is owned by two or more persons jointly, no one of them being the sole owner of the particular right involved. This is sometimes considered analogous to the ownership by two or more persons together of a single undivided piece of land. It should be emphasized at the outset that this situation is to be distinguished from that involved in the problem of divisibility of copyright which concerns the question of transferring ownership of some one of the several rights comprised in copyright so that different persons own different rights in a work, with any particular right having one owner. Joint ownership may come about in any of several ways. Primarily, when two or more authors in pursuance of a common design together create a single work (commonly referred to as a "joint work" or "a work of joint authorship") they become joint owners of the work. No one of the coauthors alone owns the "joint work" or any particular right therein; all the coauthors together own all the rights in the one work. And it should be noted that if any one of the coauthors of a "joint work" assigns his interest in the work, his assignee and the other coauthors become joint owners. A "joint work" must be distinguished from what is commonly known as a "composite work." In broad terms, a "joint work" is a unitary work, the parts of which, although created by several authors, are not considered to be individual works in themselves. A simple example would be a story written by two authors; here the contribution of either one of the authors is not separately identifiable or, though identifiable, is not capable of use as a separate work in itself. A "composite work," broadly speaking, is one which puts together the separate and distinct works of different authors. A clear-cut example would be a magazine containing a number of short stories contributed by various independent authors; here each story is separately identified and capable of separate use as a work in itself. The magazine as a whole would be a "composite work," but neither the magazine nor any of the stories by one author would be a "joint work." The rights in each story would be owned by its author alone (unless of course assigned by him), and the rights in the magazine as a whole would ordinarily be owned by the magazine publisher alone (as the "author" of the "composite work"). The problem of divisibility is dealt with in Divisibility of Copyrights, by Abraham L. Kaminstein (Study No. 11 in the present committee print). |