|
Copyrighting Copywriting; A Warning.
“Firstly, allow us to provide definitions for these two terms,
since they are often confused by the general public.”
Copywriting and Copyrighting get confused
- Copyrighting
The term relates to the rights of ownership and reproduction
for any piece of intellectual property, be this written content, music
or video files or any other materials created by specific individuals
or organisations.
The Copyright for this article for instance, is held solely by Persephone.
- Copywriting
This word refers to the activity or profession of writing text (copy),
particularly for the purpose of sales or marketing.
More recently, the term has also been applied to the creation of content
for commercial web sites.
Therefore, copywriters are in effect authors of sales literature or internet
content, rather than the experts in intellectual property rights they are
often mistakenly perceived to be.
Copyrights do of course play a major role in the creation of any written
materials, so a certain level of knowledge is required on the part of writers.
From a client’s point of view too, intellectual property rights
are important when dealing with copywriters, since the rights to any written
materials are not transferred automatically on delivery of these. According
to British and European legislation, the copyright to any materials is
held by the original creator unless formally surrendered or transferred
to a third party.
|
Established laws favour the author
This can sometimes create a problem for clients who take delivery of commissioned
materials without a formally expressed transfer of copyright into their
name, thus leaving the door open to further demands for financial (or other)
recompense by its original author(s).
In other words, if you are commissioning a writer to produce sales literature
on your behalf, you must ensure that the copyright to these materials is
transferred to you in writing, otherwise the rights for publication and/or
reproduction remain with their original creator.
Copyright disputes are becoming increasingly common, since the continuously
growing demand for internet content has spawned a large number of copywriting
services not inclined to surrender the rights to their writings upon
delivery; waiting instead for an opportune moment to claim ownership of
said materials at a later stage and enter negotiations for often exorbitant
licensing or transfer fees.
In these cases, there is little the client can do except comply (especially
where no formal contract exists), since the intellectual property
rights indisputably rest with the author who is now in a position to name
their price.
Therefore, where copyrighting copywriting is concerned, caution on the
part of clients is strongly advised.
Click here to return to our Copywriting
Articles Page |
|
