A Message From Your Future: Reversion Of Copyright In Canada

Reversion is one of the most overlooked aspects of Canadian copyright law.

A business that validly acquires copyright may believe that it holds copyright for the entire term of protection, only to later discover that copyright in a work reverts automatically to the author's heirs on the 25th anniversary of the author's death if certain conditions are met. Without an understanding of what the future holds, or a strategy to address it, there can be unpleasant surprises, and unintended consequences, decades after the agreement is signed and money is spent exploiting the copyright.

The issue can be particularly troublesome for audiovisual producers, who often acquire rights in existing literary works and spend millions of dollars making and marketing movies based on that underlying material. Those producers, as well as their licensees and assigns, may lose their rights — and, with those rights, their ability to create sequels and remakes or even to exploit their