I’m curious – do you have a cite that the guy who steals a dollar from petty cash and wins the lottery with a ticket he bought owes his workplace more than a dollar? I’d have thought he owed restitution (the dollar), could be prosecuted for theft, and could be fired for cause. But I don’t think his workplace gets the lottery haul.
Same with the bank – you can be prosecuted for theft, you can owe them $1,000,000, you can do jail time, etc. But I don’t think they own the rights to painting you created with the proceeds.
At least, that’s how it seems to me, but IANAL, IANA expert in criminal law, and I’d love to see a cite either way.
Read my first post, where I quoted the copyright law (It’s under the “definitions” section – Section 101). In addition, Section 201b explains that the company only owns the copyright if it is a work made for hire.
Now can you come up with a cite to back your claim? I’m waiting.
Of course not. Copyright only applies to the creation of the art, not commissioning someone to do it. Also robbing a bank is a crime. Doing your own personal business on company time is not. If it is, can you cite which law is being broken?
The company does not own your work unless it is work made for hire. Period.
Again, you can be fired for doing personal work on company time (ever hear of anyone being prosecuted for it though? If so, cite.). The company might want to sue you to pay them back for the time spent working on your project (but it would hardly be worth the effort). But it does not own the work unless they hired you to create it (care to cite otherwise?)
IANAL (but I work with them occasionally), and seems hard to see the logic in general in the company owning copyright (or in the other case, having any claim on the lottery winnings). But what about the laws passed in the last few decades to prevent criminals from profiting from their crime? They were originally written to address criminals selling their story (as a book or film rights), and profiting from it. Could a decent lawyer make a reasonable (i.e. likely to be upheld) argument that the lottery winnings would come under the same statute?
So if I hire somebody for the express purpose of creating a work of art for me, the copyright still belongs to the person I hire? Even you would agree that this is nonsense.
Both acts are potentially tortious. Criminal law is irrelevant here.
Your cite does not provide that the “author’s” ownership of the copyright is absolute, no matter how inequitable his or her conduct is. This is a very strong claim you are making, and it’s not enough to simply cite the definition of “author.”
As a general rule, principles of equity apply to ownership of all kinds of property, even intellectual property. I will try to find a cite for this, but it’s common sense.
Not at all. It depends on the specifics in the agreement you sign when you “hire” that somebody. Typically, if you want to buy both the actual work of art and the copyright to it, you would have to pay more.
I regularily work at horse shows where the show hires a show photographer, who takes pictures and sells photos to the exhibitors. The usual agreement nowdays is that the sale is only of a specific print of a photo taken by the photographer, and he retains the copyright on it. The buyer can’t legally take it to a local photo shop and get more copies made, or publish it in magazines, etc.
That last is commonly a point of contention: buyers want to advertise their wins in a magazine, but some photographers want to charge an extra fee for that. Other photographers allow it as long as their photo credit is published too, or allow it a limited number of times. And magazines are taking heat from photographers, who threaten them for violating their copyright. Some magazines have taken to requiring a signed release from the photographer before publishing a photo. But that is causing problems, because photographers are often away from home at shows, and don’t send that release in time for the magazine’s deadline. So buyers are complaining that they were charged money for a photo that they can’t actually make use of.
We’re starting to see buyers demanding that the sale agreement include specific releases for using the photo in magazines, on sales bills, etc. Many photographers are starting to do this. Often they offer 2 prices; one for just a single print, another for the print plus limited rights to re-publish it.
We are also starting to see exhibitors complaining to Show Committees if they hire a Show Photographer who is known to be ‘unreasonable’ on re-publication rights. Unfortunately, some of the most ‘unreasonable’ photographers are the best ones around. (They can afford to be, I guess.) But it leaves Show Committees stuck in the middle.
My teaching contract reads that the district co-owns the copyright for (possibly) anything I do on company time, however the wording is nebulous enough that if I did work on something not related to my job as a teacher (e.g. writing the great American novel) they may not co-own the copyright. I love CBAs.
I suppose I could have been clearer. Here’s the scenario: I rob a million dollars from a bank and use the million dollars to hire an artist to create a work of art for me. My agreement with the artist clearly provides that I will own the copyright.
Suppose that the copyright is worth 10 million dollars. Will the bank be able to have a court make me turn over the copyright to it (the bank), thereby reaping a 9 million dollar windfall? Quite possibly.
Would the fact that I am technically the copyright owner prevent this? Probably not.
Prevent it? No, I’d say that’s what makes it possible in the first place.
You are the copyright owner, so that is an asset you own. The bank can go after you to get recompensed for the money you stole from it. So they can seize it. Or they (or a Court) can force you to sell it for $10 million, and then claim against that money.
Whether they could claim the whole $10 million, or only the original $1 million you stole (plus legal expenses, interest, damage to their vault, and whatever else the bank can dream up) may be dependent on the state laws that Quercus mentioned, which prohibit a criminal from benefiting from his crime. (You aren’t actually benefitting from the crime; you’re benefiting from the shrewd investment in an artistic work that has dramatically increased in value. But your original investment came from a crime, so I expect the Court would treat it as products of a crime.)
In reality, of course, your defense lawyer would long since had you sign the rights over to him to pay you legal fees, so he got it first. The bank might try to recover from him, and some such cases have been successful. But it’s unlikely that you will ever see any of that money.