Copyright House Directory

We have opened the Copyright House Directory. The directory shows a list of registered works with Copyright House, including the title of registered works, author, registration id of the work, date and time stamp, security code and other information submitted during copyright registration.

You are a creative, artistic person. You probably have friends and contacts of a similar artistic nature. Why not do them a favour and tell them about Copyright House? You can do that very easily on our Friends page. We make it easy for you to send an email about us, or to post onto social networking sites with just a single click.

Do you have a website of your own? You can put a link to Copyright House on your site by going to our Link to us page. Simply copy and paste the code.

Joint ownership of copyright

In a case where two or more people are inextricably linked to the creation of a work, there would be a joint ownership of copyright. In order for this to occur, one the two following criteria have to be met. Either, the contribution from each party must be inseparable or the individual contributions combine to form a complete creation that is not comprised of distinct elements. For example, if a song was written where one person wrote the lyrics and another person wrote the music, each person would have their own copyright ownership of their contribution.* However if two people wrote an instrumental piece of music, a joint ownership of copyright would occur.

When someone wishes to use a work that has a joint ownership of copyright, permission from each owner of the copyright is always required. Should all permissions not be given, then an infringement of copyright could still occur.

In any collaboration an agreement can be made where one party could claim ownership of copyright. Each collaborator must give their explicit consent for this to happen. Such an agreement may wish to be made in order to make giving permissions easier in the future.

A joint ownership of copyright can – like any copyright ownership – be sold, transferred, inherited etc. Once again, all collaborators in a joint ownership of copyright must agree to the transaction.


* I should make it clear that if someone wanted to use the lyrics without the music, or vice versa, then only the permission of that particular author would be needed. But if the complete song was wished to be used, then joint permission would still be needed.


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