On Mon, Jun 07, 2004 at 10:45:37AM +1000, Benno wrote: > On Sun Jun 06, 2004 at 21:44:21 +1000, Andrew Bennetts wrote: > > > >Here's another example of joint ownership -- Zope Corporation's Contributor > >Agreement: > >http://dev.zope.org/DevHome/CVS/Contributor.pdf (FAQ at > >http://dev.zope.org/CVS/ContributorFAQ). > > > > I was under the impression that in Australian copyright law there could only > be one copyright owner. (That could be either a person or a comany). > > www.copyright.org.au seems to have lots of information about this. > > They also have really good fact sheets. One of the ones I read implied > that joint copyright was not valid in anyway. In such a case copyright is > held by the initial author.
Their fact sheet titled "Ownership of Copyright" says on page 5: "Can copyright be jointly owned? Yes -- this can happen in two ways: * there may be joint authors of a work -- that is, two or more authors have made indistinguishable contributions to the creation of the work; * you can also agree that copyright will be jointly owned, whether or not the contributions are indistinguishable. For example, some bands decide that everyone in the band will jointly own copyright in all music and lyrics created by band members, even though all the band members may not be joint authors of each piece of music and lyrics. " So clearly, joint ownership of copyright is recognised in Australian law. -Andrew. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
