Source: https://www.mediainstitute.org/2011/03/15/authors-contracts-and-the-u-s-copyright-law-part-i/
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 07:46:58+00:00

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In the U.S. Constitution, the phrase “limited Times,” and the first U.S. Copyright Act’s implementation of a second 14-year period of copyright conditional upon the author’s survival through the first 14-year term,6 thus suggests that the Framers were similarly cognizant of authors’ alienation of their rights, and similarly sympathetic to authors’ need for a fresh start. But the Constitution does not otherwise address the scope of authors’ contractual grants. By the same token, the first U.S. Copyright Act constrained the form of the contract by requiring a signed and witnessed writing,7 but in no way regulated its substance. While many other countries’ copyright laws contain elaborate dispositions limiting the nature and scope of authors’ contracts in the authors’ interests,8 provisions concerning authors’ contracts in U.S. copyright law remain sparse, nor are they always author-protective.
In earlier columns (“Public Licenses: The Gift That Keeps On Giving” (June 11, 2009), and “Authors’ Contracts: Don’t Give Away the Store!” (Feb. 19, 2009), I addressed some legal and practical issues concerning “viral” contracting, and authors’ bargaining position relative to professional publishers. I have also discussed authors’ inalienable statutory right to terminate transfers of copyright, see “‘The sole right … shall return to the Authors’: Part II: Implementing Authors’ Recapture Rights Under the 1976 Copyright Act” (Feb. 26, 2010).
This column will consider other features of the 1976 Copyright Act that directly concern authors’ contracts, along with state-law contract rules that supplement the federal regulation. Relevant provisions of the federal statute relate to authorship status and to conditions of form predicate to the validity of a transfer of exclusive rights (and, by negative inference, to the validity of a license of non exclusive rights). In addition, in a subsequent installment of IP Viewpoints, I will examine statutory presumptions as to the scope of a transfer. Because there are very few of these, courts generally look to the general contract law of the states whose law governs the transfer in order to assess how broad a grant the author has made, particularly in the context of modes of exploitation unknown at the time the contract was concluded.
The 1976 Act establishes some rules relevant to the validity and scope of transfers of exclusive rights. Section 204(a) requires that these be in writing, and signed by the transferor. The 1976 Act, however, sets out no rules regarding the conditions for a valid grant of non-exclusive rights. Courts have held that these may be oral or inferred from conduct.13 On the other hand, relevant state statutes of frauds, such as those applicable to agreements whose value exceeds $500,14 might nonetheless require certain transfers of non-exclusive rights to be in writing. Given the author-protective policy of Section 204(a),15 it would be perverse to interpret the 1976 Act’s silence on non-exclusive grants as preempting a state-law requirement of a writing.16 Where the Copyright Act articulates no specific rules regarding copyright contracts, the general contract norms of the state whose law governs the contract, including the statute of frauds, would apply.
Returning to exclusive rights, Section 201(d) specifies that the rights within copyright may be divided and owned separately. While rights under copyright thus are “divisible,”17 neither Section 201(d) nor any other provision of the 1976 Copyright Act prohibits assignment of the totality of the author’s rights.18 As a result, so long as the agreement is in writing and signed by the author, she can validly grant all her rights, including with respect to exploitations developed after the contract’s conclusion, for a lump sum or even no payment at all.
If the author makes such a grant, the contract will unambiguously convey all her rights. By contrast, if the contract withholds some rights, or leaves room for doubt as to its scope, the contact will be open to interpretation. Whether federal- or state-law rules guide that interpretation, and if so, to what end, will be one of the topics examined in the next installment of this column.
2. U.S. Const., Art. I, Sec. 8, cl. 8 (emphasis added).
3. An exception is the work-for-hire doctrine, under which employers and certain commissioning parties are the first owners of copyright, and are denominated statutory “authors.” See 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 201(b), discussed infra.
4. 8 Anne Ch. 19, Sec. 11 (1710).
5. On the history of the reversion right in Britain and the United States and on 19th-century author-publisher contracts, see Lionel Bently and Jane C. Ginsburg (2010), ‘“The sole right … shall return to the Authors’: Anglo-American Authors’ Reversion Rights From the Statute of Anne to Contemporary U.S. Copyright,” Berkeley Technology Law Journal, Vol. 25, p. 1475.
6. 1 Statutes At Large, 124, Sec. 1 (1790).
7. The Act provided that the rights to engage in the acts the statute reserved to authors or proprietors – to “print, reprint, publish, or import, or cause to be printed, reprinted, published, or imported from any foreign Kingdom or State” – could not be exercised by third parties “without the consent of the author or proprietor thereof, first had and obtained in writing, signed in the presence of two or more credible witnesses….” Id., Sec. 2.
8. See, e.g., Code de la propriété intellectuelle, arts. L131-1 to L131-8 (Fr.); Gesetz über Urheberrecht und verwandte Schutzrechte [UrhG] [Copyright Law], v. 09.09.1965 (BGB1. I S, 1273), amended by v. 17.12.2008 (BGBl. I S. 2586), §§ 31-44 (Ger.); Ley Federal de Derechos de Autor [LFDA] [Copyright Law], D.O. 19 May 1997, arts. 30-75 (Mex.).
9. 17 U.S.C. § 201(a) (2006).
12. Id., §§ 203, 304(c).
13. Effects Assocs., Inc. v. Cohen, 908 F.2d 555 (9th Cir. 1990).
14. See, e.g., N.Y.U.C.C. § 2-201 (McKinney 2001); Cal. Com. Code § 2201 (West 2002).
15. See Konigsberg Int’l, Inc. v. Rice, 16 F.3d 355, 357 (9th Cir. 1994) (“Section 204’s writing requirement not only protects authors from fraudulent claims, but also ‘enhances predictability and certainty of ownership – Congress’s paramount goal’ when it revised the Act in 1976.” (quoting Effects Assocs., 908 F.2d at 557).
16. Compare Korman v. HBC Florida, Inc., 182 F.3d 1291 (11th Cir. 1999) (35-year termination provision of Copyright Act does not preempt state law allowing for immediate termination of contracts having unspecified duration).
17. See H.R. Rep. No. 94-1476, at 123 (1976) (“[Section 201(d)] contains the first explicit statutory recognition of the principle of divisibility of copyright in our law. This provision, which has long been sought by authors and their representatives, and which has attracted wide support from other groups, means that any of the exclusive rights that go to make up a copyright, including those enumerated in section 106 and any subdivision of them, can be transferred and owned separately.”).
18. With one exception: The 1976 Act declares ineffective any agreement waiving the author’s right to terminate grants of rights 35 years after the contract was executed. See 17 U.S.C. § 203.

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