Maybe. Where two or more people have created a work protected
by copyright and their
contributions cannot be distinguished, those people are joint authors and the copyright is shared.
Examples include where one person has drafted an article and another person has amended and
added to it; a broadcast made by more than one person; and the works of Gilbert and Sullivan.
The
law says that two people, the producer and principal director, are joint authors of a film.
However, where the finished work includes distinct and
separate works by different authors, each
contributing author would own only the copyright in their own work included in the ‘collection’.
This
could apply, for example, to an anthology of poetry with each poem written by a different person.
In the case of works made by employees during the course
of their employment, different rules
apply. If all the joint authors were employees of the same employer, then the employer would
automatically own the copyright (unless the contracts of employment stated otherwise). But if one
of the joint authors was not an employee of that same employer, then copyright in that joint work
would be jointly owned by all the joint authors.
Those are the basic rules about first copyright ownership
of works of joint authorship. However, the
law allows the joint authors to have a contractual agreement between them stating who will own the
copyright. These agreements override the above rules. Similarly, the law allows employees who
are joint authors to have an agreement with their (same) employer stating who will own the
copyright.
