Legal Question in Intellectual Property in Missouri
Co-authorship
Parties A & B converse about an observation of Party A's. Party B proposes they write a book together about Party A's observation.Parties A & B verbally agree to co-author a book based on 6 tape recorded interviews.Party A sends notes to Party B but Party B never responds to the notes and does not proceed on his own.Eight months later,Party A notifies Party B that Party A is going to commence with the book anyway.Party B does not respond.Two months later,
Party A asks Party B to rejoin the project as a collaborator.Party B agrees.Party A and Party B jointly conduct the interviews and both make and own separate--but duplicate--tape recordings.Party A transcribes all 6,writes a book,and finds a publisher.Party B transcribes 1 tape and portions of two others but doesn't write the book which Party A wrote and submitted to the publisher.Can Party A claim sole-authorship and enter into a legal contract with the publisher on that basis,or does Party B have full rights of co-authorship?
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: Co-authorship
The test of joint authorship is two-pronged: first, is the putative co-author's contribution sufficient for independent copyright protection, and second, whether the author intended that the co-author's contribution be incorporated into the work at the time the co-author created his contribution. On your fact pattern, this would appear to be true.
As to the publisher, either joint owner of a work has the right to exploit all of the sub-rights of copyright, including reproduction (publishing), so the publisher should not require both A and B to sign; however, if A signs a publishing deal, he is obliged to share all royalties equally with B, and many publishers will implement that in the contract (i.e., it will make payments to both A and B).
Best wishes,
LDWG
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