Law Offices of Ronald D. Jackson

Intellectual Property Law

To Negotiate with Power, Know Your Copyrights

An Overview of Your Basic Rights Under Copyright Law

Disclaimer: This is not legal advice.

Owners of content – artists, writers, photographers, designers, software programmers and other creators-- have valuable rights under the U.S. copyright laws.  Our copyright laws give the rights to encourage and reward creative efforts.  A knowledge of your "copyrights" is your armor and sword in all negotiations involving the sale or licensing of content to multimedia developers or other new media companies.

Multimedia blends various content -- sound, text and graphics.  The right to use copyrighted work is essential to the production of most multimedia products.  Often, using existing content is more efficient for the multimedia developer instead of creating original works. Therefore, the multimedia developer will often need the content owner's consent to use his or her work to prepare the multimedia product. Despite amicable relationships, the developer’s interests and the content owner’s interests are in natural and unavoidable competition. Typically, the developer wants to get the broadest and most flexible rights in the content owner’s work. In contrast, the content owner may need flexibility to use his or her creative works in other projects and at other times. Both parties need knowledge of copyrights to strike the best and fairest deal. One of two things is likely to happen if this knowledge is absent or one-sided: the deal will not happen or one party will get a bad deal.

A copyright consists of a bundle of rights.

What are the rights that the copyright laws give to content owners? A quick answer is that a copyright gives a content owner the right to prevent others from "copying" his or her creations. A more thorough answer comes from understanding that a copyright is a bundle of rights. The law grants copyright owners a limited monopoly by giving them five separate rights in their original works:

1. Reproduction right. The right to make copies of the original work.



2. Modification right. The right to prepare derivative works based on the original work. A derivative work is a new work that results from modifying an original work.



3. Distribution right. The right to distribute copies of the work publicly by sale, rental, lease, or lending.



4. Public performance right. The right to play, recite, or otherwise publicly perform the work.



5. Public display right. The right to publicly show or otherwise display the work in a public place.

Consider your bundle of rights to make the best deal.

All negotiations to use copyrighted work is a bargain for some or all these rights. Understanding this separation of rights is important to successful negotiations in multimedia transactions. Remember that content owners can divide, assign or transfer these rights in many ways. It is important that both the content owner and multimedia developer know which of the rights in the bundle they need before negotiations begin. If you are the multimedia developer, you will want to be sure that you get the rights that you need to complete your project. If you need worldwide distribution rights, then you must negotiate for them. Otherwise the content owner’s copyright will allow him or her to transfer those rights to others, perhaps to your competitors. If you will use content in different mediums such as in a book, film, movie, CD-ROM, you need to negotiate for the appropriate rights. If you are a content owner, then you may wish to retain your modification rights to market later.

The interplay between the various copyrights can be confusing and negotiations can get complex. However, knowing your "copyrights" will help to demystify things. Just remember: Always know what you need and fight hard for your copyrights.