The strong development of the creative industry has highlighted the importance of copyright protection. Works made for hire is a fairly familiar concept in the field of copyright registration. However, this raises many questions about how to register copyright for these works? The following article from VCD will help you.
1. The “work made for hire” doctrine.
The “work made for hire” doctrine was formed from the copyright law of the United States, “work made for hire” is translated into Vietnamese as “work made for hire”, meaning that the copyright does not belong to the author.
Copyright is basically understood as the exclusive right to make copies and control the original of literary and artistic works (such as writings, journalism, cinema, architecture, applied arts, etc.) protected by copyright law for a certain period of time (usually 50 years after the author’s death). The letter C in a circle © symbol often appears on publications as a warning sign of a copyrighted work. However, the law does not require the © symbol on the work for copyright to be protected.
According to Cornell Law School, copyright is the right to make copies, publish, sell or distribute the subject matter of copyright protection. Meanwhile, according to Harvard University, copyright is a legal right granted to authors, artists, composers, or other creators that allows them to control the use of their work by others, so that copyrighted works generally cannot be copied, distributed, or appropriated by others without their permission.
“Works made for hire” originated in the 1989 Supreme Court decision in Community for Creative Non-Violencev. Reid.
Section 101 of the 1976 Copyright Act divides “works made for hire” into two categories:
- Works made by an employee in the course of performing work within the scope of the employee’s contractual duties.
- Works made for hire or commission are used to mean:
- A contribution or article to a collective work or collection.
- A part of a cinematographic work or other audiovisual work.
- Translation.
- Supplementary work (introduction, foreword, illustration, commentary, illustrations, etc.).
- Compiled work.
- Instructional text.
- Test paper.
- Answer sheet for test paper.
- Map work.
If the parties agree in writing signed by themselves that the work must be considered a “work for hire”.
2. How to register copyright for a “work made for hire” in Vietnam?
According to the current Vietnamese Intellectual Property Law, Clause 2, Article 4 stipulates that copyright is the right of the organization or individual who creates the work or owns the work. In which, the subject of copyright includes literary, artistic, scientific works; the subject of rights related to copyright includes performances, sound recordings, video recordings, broadcast programs, and encrypted satellite signals.
In Vietnamese law, there is no legal concept of “work made for hire” or “work made for hire”. The so-called “work made for hire” is in the form of an organization or individual entering into a contract with an author to create a work or in the form of an organization or individual assigning a task to an author belonging to their organization to create. However, these forms are not “work made for hire” as defined in Article 101 of the US Copyright Law mentioned above and because Vietnam does not accept the transfer of personal rights except the right to publish and allow others to publish, and does not recognize the author as an organization or legal entity. Therefore, the author of the work must be the person hired or assigned the task, and the copyright owner is the person who hires or assigns the task to the author, unless otherwise agreed.
The application for copyright registration for this work includes:
- Copyright registration form.
- Copy of the work.
- Author’s commitment.
- Creative/design rental contract (if any).
- Decision on assignment/task assignment (if any).
- Agreement between co-authors (if any).
- Consent of co-copyright owners (if any).
- Power of attorney if the applicant is an authorized person.
- Author’s citizen identification card.
- Business registration of the company if the owner is an organization.
Accordingly, for copyright registration, you can submit your application at the following locations:
- The Copyright Office in Hanoi.
- Representative Office of the Copyright Office in Ho Chi Minh City.
- Representative Office of the Copyright Office in Da Nang City.
The above is the article “How are “works made for hire” copyrighted?” that VCD sent to you. We hope this article is useful to you.
Sincerely,
