Intellectual Property - Copyright - Assignment of a copyright

A copyright may be transferred entirely or partially. The only limitations to this are the moral rights of an author, i.e. the right to be stated as an author and the obligation to respect the author. A transfer of a copy does not include a transfer of the copyright itself.

An entire transfer means that the author loses all his economic rights to the work after the transfer. An entire transfer may even cover future works. If an author dies, rules governing inheritance and wills applies to copyright.

If, in a situation of an entire transfer, the possibilities to economically use the work increases in an unexpected way after the transfer, the right these new possibilities have usually been entitled to the original author. However, there is no supreme court decision covering this issue, and therefore the rule is somewhat uncertain.