A recent decision of the Federal Court of Australia, Career
Step, LLC v TalentMed Pty Ltd (No 2) [2018] FCA 132
(Career Step) provides a useful reminder of the principles
that apply when determining whether a new copyright work is the
result of joint authorship.
Joint Authorship – what does the law
say?
The question of authorship is fundamental and often of critical
importance because the general rule under Australian copyright law
is that the author of a work is the first owner of any copyright
subsisting in that work (subject of course to certain exceptions,
such as that the first owner of a work created by an employee is
their employer).
The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) defines a
"work of joint authorship" as "a work that has
been produced by the collaboration of two or more authors and in
which the contribution of each author is not separate from the
contribution of the other author or the contributions of the other
authors."
