Intellectual Property for Publishers

Originally Published February 2008

The legal issues which arise for magazine publishers are many and varied, from defamation through to advertising and trade practices concerns. This article however focuses on intellectual property and the acquisition and management of rights. It commences with an overview of the copyright principles which lie at the foundation of publishing rights. Against this background, it then examines rights issues for magazine publishers when dealing with contributors.

1. Copyright – the Basics for Publishers

In 2006 Random House, publisher of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, was sued for copyright infringement in the English High Court. The plaintiffs, who were the authors and copyright owners of the book The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, claimed that Brown's novel constituted a copyright infringement of their own work. Nowhere in The Da Vinci Code does any direct text from that other work appear. Nevertheless the plaintiffs argued that