Asked in Intellectual Property and International Law

Q: I need to have the copyrights to my project and everything in it?

Hello, my question is about copyrighting and protection of copyrights internationally.

I have a project in which we publish 2D/3D animations for kids to watch. Animations also include songs that we produce. But we don't produce the animations ourselves. We pay a foreign (Indian) studio to do them for us. They produce and send us the raw animation and then we wrap it up and publish on various video channels/tv.

My question is, how can we have the copyrights of this whole product, internationally? How do we make this totally our own? So we won't have any copyrighting problems in the future.

Thank you for your help.

1 Lawyer Answer

A: As already answered by the US Copyright Office that "there is no such thing as an “international copyright” that will automatically protect an author’s writings throughout the world. Protection against unauthorized use in a particular country depends on the national laws of that country. However, most countries offer protection to foreign works under certain conditions that have been greatly simplified by international copyright treaties and conventions. There are two principal international copyright conventions, the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (Berne Convention) and the Universal Copyright Convention (UCC). Under the UCC, any formality in a national law can be satisfied by the use of a notice of copyright in the form and position specified in the UCC. A UCC notice should consist of the symbol © (C in a circle) accompanied by the year of first publication and the name of the copyright proprietor (example: © 2006 John Doe). This notice must be placed in such a manner and location as to give reasonable notice of the claim to copyright."

If you are worried about the copyright in India and other countries, you should registered your work, as least, in US, and put an UCC notice as stated about. Also, you should have a nondisclosure and non-compete agreement with the India company producing your product to stop the India company unauthorized reproducing of your products. For counties not a member of the Berne Union, you may consider hiring a local attorney of the country to register the copyright under the local laws. It is complicate, therefore, you had better to hire an US attorney familiar with copyright registration to assist you. Many attorneys here offer free consultation and affordable service rate. You should contact one of them.

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