Re: Personal vacation film produced

On Sat, 6 Jun 1998, Harold Federow <hfederow[_at_]u.washington.edu> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 5 Jun 1998, Terry Carroll <carroll[_at_]tjc.com> wrote:
> >
> > This is an interesting question. Certainly, under the applicable
> > Berne Convention principle of national treatment, the issue of
> > infringement is decided under U.S. law, because it's dealing with
> > the infringment in the U.S. of the U.S. copyright (and presumably
> > in a U.S. court).
> >
> > However, in this case, all authorship activities took place in Mexico.
> > What law is applied to determine who owns the resulting U.S. copyright?
> > The law of the nation where the authorship took place, or the law of
> > the nation whose copyright is being enforced, and that is enforcing the
> > copyright? Berne Article 5 isn't particularly helpful on this point.
>
> Isn't the US copyright based on ownership of the Mexican copyright under
> Berne?

Not as I read Berne and its implementing legislation. The U.S. copyright is an independent U.S. copyright under 17 USC 104, not based on any other nation's copyright.

> So wouldn't you have to look to Mexcian law to decide who owned
> it and, therefore, who had the US copyright?

Well, that's what I think is the open issue. I suspect the answer is no, but as I said, Berne Article 5 and the implementing legislation isn't particularly helpful on this point. I suspect that the full provisions of the U.S. copyright statute would apply, including the provisions about determining ownership. I don't see why the ownership of the U.S. copyright would be dependent on any other law other than U.S. law.

--
Terry Carroll       |    "Dreamwerks clearly caters to the  
Santa Clara, CA     |    pocket-protector niche..."
carroll[_at_]tjc.com     |       - Dreamwerks Production Group v. SKG Studio,
Modell delendus est |         case no. 96-55595 (9th Cir. Apr. 21 1998)