{"id":24,"date":"2014-08-10T22:26:04","date_gmt":"2014-08-11T02:26:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/?p=24"},"modified":"2014-08-10T22:26:04","modified_gmt":"2014-08-11T02:26:04","slug":"monkey-business-teaches-an-important-copyright-lesson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/?p=24","title":{"rendered":"Monkey Business Teaches an Important Copyright Lesson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There has been a lot of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/the-intersect\/wp\/2014\/08\/06\/if-a-monkey-takes-a-selfie-in-the-forest-who-owns-the-copyright-no-one-says-wikimedia\/\">press<\/a>\u00a0recently about nature photographer David Slater\u2019s claim of copyright in a \u201cselfie\u201d taken by a macaque monkey that picked up Slater\u2019s camera and began snapping hundreds pictures.\u00a0 The <a href=\"http:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/Macaque#mediaviewer\/File:Macaca_nigra_self-portrait.jpg\">selfie<\/a>, taken by a crested black macaque (Macaca nigra) in an Indonesian forest in 2011, found its way to the Wikipedia Commons website.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Macaca_nigra_self-portrait.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-25 aligncenter\" alt=\"Macaca_nigra_self-portrait\" src=\"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Macaca_nigra_self-portrait-216x300.jpg\" width=\"117\" height=\"211\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>To be copyrightable, a work must be the result of human authorship.\u00a0 Emile Borel&#8217;s infinite monkeys at infinite typewritters might create a Shakespeare play, but it would not be\u00a0copyrightable, and neither is a\u00a0macaque selfie.<\/p>\n<p>Slater\u2019s monkey business is an important reminder about the importance of authorship to the ownership of copyright rights.\u00a0 Works prepared by an employee in the scope of their employement are works made for hire, and the employer is considered the author and the owner of the work.\u00a0 However with the exception of certain specified types of works created pursuant to a prior written agreement, the owner of a copyrightable work is the author.\u00a0 This means that merely <b>hiring and paying an independent contractor does <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">not<\/span> transfer ownership of the copyright in their work product<\/b>, a critical lapse for someone who wants to modify (prepare derivatives of), or reproduce or distribute copies of, the work.\u00a0 It&#8217;s also important to remember that while co-author of a copyrighted work can generally do whatever he or she wants with the jointly created\u00a0work, each co-author but has to account to the other co-owners for the use of the co-owned work, and not necessarily in proportion to the contributions of the co-authors.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Whenever a non-employee is engaged to create a work\u00a0 or contribute to a work, have a writen work-made-for-hire agreement (if appropriate), or an assignment.\u00a0 Otherwise you may not be able to do what you want with that work.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There has been a lot of press\u00a0recently about nature photographer David Slater\u2019s claim of copyright in a \u201cselfie\u201d taken by a macaque monkey that picked up Slater\u2019s camera and began snapping hundreds pictures.\u00a0 The selfie, taken by a crested black &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/?p=24\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26,"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions\/26"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}