Joint Ownership Of Copyright By Collaborators

For collaborators, a tempting and seemingly easy to live with solution appears to be joint ownership. But is it really all that effective? In this article, we briefly look at some difficulties.

In general, the person who creates a copyright work or other subject matter is the owner of that material, subject to some specific exceptions under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) (Act).

When collaborating, the first step is to identify who will be creating copyright material and whether those persons are employees. If the creator is an employee who created the relevant work in the course of employment, the party who is the employer of the creator owns the copyright in that work, subject to any agreement to the contrary.