Copyright term, film labeling, and film preservation legislation : hearings before the Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, One Hundred Fourth Congress, first session, on H.R. 989, H.R. 1248, and H.R. 1734 ... June 1 and July 13, 1995 (1996)

Record Details:

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481 As a general njle, this termination right has relatively little impact on archival deposit agreements for two reasons. First, any such termination would affect only the grant of copyright, not the deposit of the physical material, and thus, even where the copyright grant is terminated, the deposit materials will remain with the archive And second, any derivative wori<s created pnor to the termination may continue to be exploited notwithstanding the tennination. In other words, if the grant of motion picture nghts in a novel were terminated, the resulting motion picture could continue to be screened and broadcast, but no new sequels or remakes could be produced. (d) Copyrights in underlying material contained in the film It should be kept in mind that a license or assignment of the copyright to a motion picture does not automatically result in a license or assignment of underiying copyrights contained in the film, such as music or the rights to the literary work on which the film was based. A donor can never grant greater rights than she herself has, and therefore even a grant of "all rights" may not convey the rights necessary for the exhibition or distribution of the picture if the donor did not actually have those rights to transfer. There are two ways in which this problem can arise: either the creator (generally the producer) of the film failed to acquire the necessary licenses for the underiying copyright material (extremely unlikely with studio and major independent productions, but more likely with student films, low-budget independent films, and avantgarde works); or the creator of the film once had the necessary rights but those rights expired or reverted back to the original grantor. The most common type of "reversion," called the Rear Window reversion after the Supreme Court case involving this classic film, occurs when the author of an underiying wori< published before December 31, 1977, dies during the first term of copyright (i.e., within 28 years from the date the wori< was first published or registered with the Copyright Office). The second tenm of copyright then belongs to the author's heirs, '° regardless of any licenses or assignments made by the author. In the Rear Window case, the Hitchcock film was based on a short story written by Comell Woolrich. Woolrich assigned motion picture rights in the story to another party who in tum passed it on until ultimately Universal Pictures owned the motion picture rights to the story for both the first and second terms of the copyright. But Woolrich died during the first temri and a suit was filed between Woolrich's heirs and Universal over the question of who owned the motion picture rights to the story for the second (renewal) tenm of the copyright. As a result of the Supreme Court's decision, all rights to the 58 Redefining Film Preservation