When being commissioned to produce sound for a visual piece such as in this case to animation. It is important to know who owns the copyright of the material that your working on and getting the legal consent from the owner of the copyright to share the rights with you.
Under UK law in Copyright when it comes to the arts there are certain acts within the work that are restricted to anyone but the copyright owner, these acts are:
– Copying the work;
– Issuing copies of the work to the public;
– Renting or lending the work to the public;
– Performing, playing or sharing the work in public;
– Communicating the work in public; and
– Making an adaptation of the work
As by the Intellectual Property Office: Copyright Notice: Assignment of Copyright.
It is an infringement of copyright to do any of these listed things without the consent of the original copyright owner, to obtain permission from the original copyright owner you must obviously ask permission and permission is normally in contract/license form. This is known as an assignation form.
An assignation form is part of a binding legal contract and basically assigns the rights from one party to another, again in this case it would be between the animator and myself, sometimes through a 3rd party.
There are different types of assignment processes:
Partial Assignment – this is where the copyright owner can either assign the whole or part of the copyright to a person so in this instance the animator could assign a copy to someone like myself a sound designer to do work on the piece for the use of production. This is normally done through licensing. There are also restricted acts within the contract which the assignee isn’t entitled to do, if they did this would be a breach in the contract. Acts such as playing the work publicly. These acts are restricted so only the original copyright owner has right to them. Although restricted acts are allowed to the assignee under a new license. The payment for these licenses doesn’t always have to be money. In this instance this would accurate as the payment or consideration can be provided in services. As a sound designer this is how the license would be contracted.
Elective Assignment – this is where the copyright owner chooses to transfer the whole of the copyright over to another person, this can be done by sale or the owner can simply giving it to a new owner. As stated by copyright law for the assignment to be valid there must be a form of written documentation signed by both the original copyright owner. The original owner must also make reference to his/her ‘intellectual property rights’. The court will examine the documentation to see the intention of the assignment in case of any dispute between the assigner and the assignee. It is common for the assignee to make a nominal payment to the assigner which will be agreed and stated within the documentation (this can be as little as £1) or consideration (also known or understood as a form of payment) in future royalties, this is to ensure that the contract can be enforced if the assigner breaches the agreement. There are also clauses within this contract with can lead to reversion (the copyright reverting back to the assigner).
Assignment by Reversion – this is where an assignment contract can revert the rights from the assignee back to the original copyright owner/the assigner, if certain criteria’s aren’t met such as a breach of the contract by the assignee or if the assignee’s company goes into liquidation.
In short, an assignation form is used if the copyright owner would like to distribute the ownership or part ownership of the copyright to another party, it gives the rights to copy, sell, distribute the work from one party to another, it includes all the details of the agreement within the contract such as:
– Name
– Description of work
– The assignor
– The assignee
– When and where it will be signed
– Declaration from the original copyright owner that the work they are assigning is their own, and not borrowed from other sources
– Stating that no-one else in the world has the rights to this
– Restricted acts
– Clauses
– Consideration