Co-Authors and Copyright

In two previous posts, I’ve discussed what you need to know about copyright, and the copyrightability of characters.  So now it’s on to another discussion of copyright, but this time concerning co-authors (aka, joint authors).  As always, please note that this only applies to United States law.  That being said though, it’s not going to differ much among developed nations.

The Definition of a Joint Work

In the law, anything written by two or more authors is called a Joint Work.  The Copyright Act of 1976 defines a Joint Work as:

A joint work is a work prepared by two or more authors with the intention that their contributions be merged into inseparable or interdependent parts of a unitary whole.

Pretty simple really.  “Inseparable or interdependent parts of a unitary whole” just means that it’s going to be one work.  So there’s nothing tricky in the definition.

How Does Copyright and Joint Work, uh, work?

As explained before, a copyright is automatic without you having to do a thing.  All that’s necessary is that the work or piece in question be original and fixed.  To be original, the work just needs a minimal amount of creativity.  To be fixed, it just has to be something tangible (ideas, for example, can’t be copyrighted).

So as long as a Joint Work is original and fixed, it’s copyrighted.  But how does this work for multiple authors?  Well it means that if you’ve written something with someone else, that other person can use it as they wish without your permission (and vice versa).  So if you wrote something with me, I could have it published in a magazine without your permission.

But don’t worry, you still get 50% of any money earned from the work.  So if I have it published in a magazine without your permission and get paid $100 for it, you get 50% of that ($50 in this case).

So you can boil it down to this: co-authors have an equal stake in the work, and can do with the work as they please.

Obviously, there’s a lot more to it than this (a lot more).  But that’s the very basics of it, and probably enough for 90% of us.  If you have any questions, let me know in the comments.