Copyright and Contracts.... The fun BITS
- Rhys Sellars
- Jun 24, 2016
- 2 min read
Copyright. Everyone's favorite minefield to navigate when producing any sort of creative medium. It is an extremely hard thing to even define, and even those who have been active in the creative field for decades can find it difficult to comprehend. In short, copyright is in place to protect a creative individual's work from being reproduced or re-used/re-purposed without their permission. In order for something to be copyright it merely has to be brought to reality in some kind of tangible form. Be it in writing on a piece of paper. Copyright can protect literary works and various sub-sets such as computer programs as well as painting etc.
The important thing to remember is that it is an 'idea' that is not protected by copyright. Why? Well everyone has ideas, what matter is who creates it first.
It is important when working in the creative field to understand who exactly own the rights to a piece of creative work. Something that I had assumed but wasn't 100% confident on was what occurs if you
are working in a company and create art or assets for them to use. Who owns the asset once it is created? Well this can depend on contracts and agreements that are arranged at and/or prior to your employment or commission. In cases of say a AAA game studio, most of the time once your submit all parts of an asset, source code/files, builds... whatever is required, that is basically the last you can see of it as being yours and the company then owns the piece. This can be problematic for any creatives to build and up to date portfolio of recent works if they aren't allowed to take copies of their own work that they made.
It is incredibly important to make sure you read contracts and agreements extremely carefully. What may appear "fair" may be a loophole for being exploited. Unexpected changes to what you originally agreed to can be a common issue as well as compensation for time worked if all the sudden you find yourself working lots of overtime and not working for the original $40 p/hr you agreed to.
Words of wisdom: "Get a lawyer."
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