Copyright is an important aspect in the creative field, protecting the efforts and efforts of those who create works. Copyright not only protects those efforts but also determines who has the right to control and exploit the works. However, a common question is: Who owns the copyright? Is it the author who directly performs the creation or the company? The following article “Cases where the author and copyright owner are independent of each other” from VCD will help you.
1. Determine the relationship between the author and the copyright owner?
A work is the crystallization of the author’s creative labor, so the author’s rights to the work are recognized and protected by law. Copyright in a work is considered a property right and is within the scope of the types of property stipulated in the 2015 Civil Code of Vietnam.
According to the provisions of the Law on Intellectual Property 2022, copyright includes personal rights and property rights in a work arising from the time the work is created in a certain form and material. The author is the person who directly creates the work, while the copyright owner is an individual or organization that holds one, some or all of the property rights stipulated in Clause 3, Article 19 and Clause 1, Article 20 of the Law on Intellectual Property.
According to the provisions of the Law on Intellectual Property, a subject that proves that he or she has property rights under copyright will be the owner of the copyright. A general principle is that the creator of a work is the owner of the work unless otherwise agreed.
The Berne Convention provides for the law of each member country to decide who is the author and who is the copyright owner of a work. According to Article 15 of this Convention, an individual or an organization whose name is traditionally recorded on the work is considered the author unless there is evidence to the contrary, in which case the author and the owner are one and the same. However, there are certain exceptions so that the author and the copyright owner are two separate and independent entities.
2. Cases where the author and the owner are separate and independent from each other?
Some cases in which the copyright owner is not at the same time the author:
The work is created according to an assigned task:
First of all, there is a relationship between the author and the copyright owner through a signed Labor Contract. According to the current provisions of Vietnamese law on copyright, the law recognizes the general principle that the copyright owner is the creator of the work, that is, the worker who directly created the work, except in cases where they create according to an assigned task. The assignment of the task of creating a work must be expressed in a specific document. Thus, a work created according to an assigned task, the creator of that work is still recognized as the author, but the copyright owner is the individual, agency, or organization that assigns the creative task to the author.
Work created through a creative lease contract:
Unlike the above case, the author who creates the work is a member of an agency or organization between which a labor relationship is formed, here there is only a creative lease contract signed between the parties. Therefore, according to the creative lease contract, the author will create the work according to the request of the other party and will receive a remuneration according to the level agreed by the parties. The Vietnamese legal system recognizes the principle that the creator of a work in a creative lease contract is recognized as the author, and the property rights belong to the creative lessee or the assignor unless otherwise agreed.
Transfer of copyright:
One of the rights of the copyright owner to a work is to exploit the work in different ways. The transfer of copyright by the copyright owner is often carried out in the form of copyright assignment and copyright usage assignment. A copyright assignment contract is a contract to transfer all or part of the copyright from one entity to another. Copyright assignment contracts, as prescribed by most legal systems, must be in the form of a document with full signatures of the parties. According to Article 48 of the Vietnamese Intellectual Property Law, assignment contracts must be made in writing. In which, property rights and personal rights such as the right to publish or allow others to publish are transferable subjects.
Above is the article “Cases where the author and copyright owner are independent of each other” that VCD sent to you. We hope this article is useful to you.
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