At issue was the copyright in the plaintiff’s choreography for a ballet to be part of the repertoire of the defendant’s ballet company.
Held: The contract was that of employer and employee, and accordingly the copyright vested in the defendant as employer. Even if the contract was not of employment but for services, it was an implied term that the plaintiff as Contractor would assign the copyright to the defendant as Client. The ballet was a composite work of which the elements were the music, the story, the choreography or notation of the dancing, the scenery and the costumes, and it must necessarily have been intended that the copyright in the whole ballet and each of its component elements should be in the Client.
Citations:
[1936-45] MCC 233, (1938) 82 Sol Jo 173
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Robin Ray v Classic FM Plc PatC 18-Mar-1998
Contractor and Client Copyrights
The plaintiff had contributed a design for a system of classifying and selecting tracks to be played on a radio station. He did so under a consultancy contract.
Held: A Joint authorship claim required that the contributor had made some direct . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Intellectual Property, Equity
Updated: 23 March 2022; Ref: scu.188599