Question 3

This exercise is intended to help you consider what you have discovered so far about copyright and ownership.

Consider the following scenario:

Martin, Katie, Thomas and Susan decided they would work together as a group to design and produce the greetings card. They are friends and so found it easy to work together informally.

As Martin is good at art he offered to draw any suggested content – Katie, Thomas and Susan thought this was a good idea.

Katie proposed they produce a birthday card – the others agreed this was a good idea.

Thomas suggested a bottle of champagne and some balloons would perhaps be attractive on the front of the card. Martin duly drew balloons and champagne and wrote the words ‘Happy Birthday’ on the front of the card.

Susan suggested and wrote the following wording for the inside of the card:

‘You’re not getting older, you’re just getting better

Many happy returns’

Katie thought it would be a nice touch to include some music – you know, you open the card and music plays – she suggested about 15 seconds from Stevie Wonder’s ‘Happy Birthday to You’, and she herself had sung this to her friend (just Katie singing – no music) and she had it on tape. They all agreed to include Katie’s recording as they all knew she had a good voice (from previous parties!)

The group as a whole decided that the background colour on the card would be white and that the print colour for any words would be blue.

Consider the following questions:

Who owns the copyright in the completed card in the above scenario?

	1:	In the absence of any agreement between the parties, each author is the owner of copyright in contributions that can be identified as separate works (chapters in a book, for example). In this case Martin and Katie are authors of the card and as such own the separate rights in their contributions. Martin owns the copyright in the artwork and Katie owns the copyright of the performance and the recording. In copyright terms the card would be described as having multiple authors.
Correct answer: It would be usual also to have ownership attributed to Martin and Katie with a © symbol. It is likely that the words Susan authored would be too small (insubstantial) to be considered as being capable of copyright protection.
	2:	All of the group – they all contributed ideas and expected that to be the outcome.
Incorrect answer: Copyright has traditionally been regarded as protecting the form in which ideas are expressed rather than the ideas themselves. The ideas put forward by other group members are not in themselves capable of copyright protection. Let’s suppose the card is exploited commercially. Members of the group would find it difficult to argue that they had suffered copyright infringement by either Martin or Katie. If you want to know more please read: Does copyright help me to protect my ideas? If it is not possible to identify individual contributions, where for example authors collaborate so closely that it is impossible to say who wrote which part, then the work is said to be of joint authorship. Joint authors own the copyright of the entire work jointly and equally. There are, however, some aspects that need particular care. Ownership of copyright in a work with multiple authors is still subject to confusion. Each author may own copyright in their contribution but who owns copyright in the entire work? On the other hand, while copyright in a work of joint authorship is held by the group, exploitation of the work is subject to the sometimes laborious business of getting unanimous approval from every member of the group. If you want to know more please read: Joint Authorship

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Correct Answer

The correct answer is option 1: It would be usual also to have ownership attributed to Martin and Katie with a © symbol. It is likely that the words Susan authored would be too small (insubstantial) to be considered as being capable of copyright protection.

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Question 3

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