WRITERS’ VOICE: CLARIFYING copyright
Be clear about what copyright is and how assigning it could affect you with advice from the Society of Authors’ Nicola Solomon
Watch over your copyright! Copyright allows you to monetise and control your creative work. It is the right to exploit and to prevent others from exploiting creative work throughout the world in any medium for the author’s life plus 70 years.
How do I get copyright?
Work must be recorded in permanent form to attract copyright protection. However, once recorded, copyright arises automatically: there is no need to register your copyright or even mark it with the © symbol (although that is a good idea to warn others you own the rights).
The first owner of copyright is the author (unless created in the course of employment when it is the employer). The author must be human; a case in 1927 established that if a ghost dictates work to a medium the medium owns the copyright, not the spirit! Copyright does not exist in ideas but in the form in which ideas are expressed: suggesting a plot does not make you an author; a ghost writer will own the copyright, not the person who told their story.