OUGD502 - Copyright

 OUGD502

 Copyright

No one company, studio or agency can claim the work as their own unless they have a signed copyright document.

Never breach another's copyright, it can cost a lot of money and can damage your reputation. 

Your work is under protection as soon as you have created it. (keep all your work files) and is fixed in a tangible format that is perceptible either directly, or with a device or machine. 
Meaning anything like a website, image, photograph or video etc. is protected by your copyright and does in actual fact NOT need to display the copyright mark. The copyright is ‘implicit’ in it’s creation. 

YES it is protected. (If you have a recorded instance of creating it…on a blog, a dated file, an email etc). 

Why?

you can only use other peoples work when the copyright has expired or under public domain.

Public Domain:
Generally speaking, artworks fall out of copyright and enter the public domain in the UK 70 years after the death of the artist. or 75 - 90 years after creation.

Expectation:
Sound recording, broadcasts, cable protected.

Artworks that are made in an industrial process and marketed in sufficient numbers may only be protected for a shorter period of 25 years.

Copyright in typographical arrangements of a published edition lasts for 25 years from the end of the year in which the edition was first published. 


Limitation:
Facts
Conceptual ideas not expressed in a tangible forms
public domain
Expired iteams

Reproduction Rights
YOU own both the copyright AND the rights to reproduce your work.
What it is reproduced on. On anything sold with your work applied. 
International reproduction. 
Indemnity from those who incur you legal costs. ie: A child chokes on an item that carries your work. Bankruptcy of the users. 
All advance payments of work cancelled to be retained.
 The right to have books audited on company failure. 
No sub licensing of your work without permission and fee. Retention of all original works (if agreed)

Licensing your work: 
In some cases you may be asked to ‘licence’ your work. ie: A stock illustration/image/design on which you may wish to retain the copyright.
You can ‘limit’ the license you allow to that of single use, meaning that they can use it for a single time, as opposed to using it on printed material, website and say, exhibitions as well. This mean you license and gain a fee for each use. 
See: www.copyrightservice link website for full details

“If I paid for it… …I must own it?” 
Because you ‘physically’ own the work, it does NOT mean they intellectually own it automatically unlessYOU have it assigned in writing to them.

On your invoice you may express your willingness to assign copyright on the point of ‘FULL AND FINAL PAYMENT’ of your invoice, meaning, until you are in receipt of all owed funds, you still hold copyright. (Suggesting they can not use it without a potential copyright breach.)

This in my view should be an integral part of your ‘terms and conditions’ for your creative practice.