Does a shareholder of a company also have copyright rights? If I buy, say, a share in The Walt Disney Company, does that give me part ownership in the intellectual property? Does this ownership then give me the right to copy it?
No. Only the company owns the copyright, not its shareholders. A company is a separate legal entity with its own capacity to own property. Copyright is property, not infection that can be spread onto whoever is close enough. Pretty much like shareholders can't just share the use of the company's tangible assets, they can't wet their beaks in the copyright. As a shareholder, what you could do is to appoint a director/CEO that will give you license to copy (or even transfer the copyright) — if you have enough shares to fire the current CEO and put yours. The CEO will get into legal trouble with other shareholders/creditors, but you'll still enjoy your right to copy.
When a company is dissolved, someone takes over the company's asserts, often the creditors, or they may be sold for what they will bring. Failing anyone else, it may be the crown. Assuming that the copyright was in fact owned by the company (and not by someone else and merely licensed to the company), someone owns it, (just as someone owns the physical property that the company had) but it may be hard to find out who. It is even possible that the owner is not aware of the copyright. As for Person A, that depends on the details of A's contract or agreement with the company. A may be a co-owner (unlikely). A may have rights to use the code to some extent. Or A may have no more rights than I do (that is, none at all). According to &quot;Ownership of copyright works &quot; an official UK government web page: Where a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work, or a film, is made by an employee in the course of his employment, his employer is the first owner of any copyright in the work (subject to any agreement to the contrary). The expression “in the course of employment” is not defined by the Act but in settling disputes the courts have typically had to decide whether the employee was working under a ‘contract of service’ (eg as an employee) or a ‘contract for services’ (eg as a freelancer or independent contractor). Where a person works under a ‘contract for services’ he will usually retain copyright in any works he produces, unless there is a contractual agreement to the contrary. Thus if person A was acting as an employee of the company, the copyright would automatically be owned by the company, in the absence of any written agreement between A and the company. The page goes on to state: When you ask or commission another person or organisation to create a copyright work for you, the first legal owner of copyright is the person or organisation that created the work and not you the commissioner, unless you otherwise agree it in writing. However, in some circumstances, for example when copyright is not dealt with in the contract to commission the work, courts may be willing to find that there is an implied licence allowing the commissioner to use the work for the purpose for which it was commissioned. This does not necessarily result in a transfer of ownership. Instead, the commissioner of the work may only get a limited non-exclusive licence. ... Thus if A was acting as an employee in creating or co-creating the code, and there was no written agreement on the matter between A and the company, A would have no rights to the code, and the copyright would pass to whoever purchased or was awarded it after the company dissolved. Such a copyright might well have been included in a purchase of &quot;all other assets&quot; (or some such language) and no explicit or specific mention of it been made. The situation in the US would be basically similar. Work by an employee within he scope of employment is a &quot;work-made-for-hire&quot; (WFH) under US copyright law( See 107 USC 101), and the employer is legally the author (which is not true in UK law), unless there is a written agreement to the contrary. The natural person(s) who in fact created the wok have no rights unless an agreement grants such rights. On dissolution the copyright does not end, nor is it transferred to the creator, but passes to whoever bought it, or bought or was awarded the general assets of the company (such as in a bankruptcy proceeding).
I would imagine they are yours and were always yours. You bought them. You intended to either give them to the company as a gift, sell them to the company or sign them over to the company as part of your initial capital contribution. Without a company none of those can happen.
You can't You agreed: by submitting Materials in any form to the Company, in addition to other provisions of the Terms, you automatically grant Company a royalty-free, world-wide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, and assignable right and license to use, copy, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, edit, translate, create derivative works from, transmit, distribute, publicly display and publicly perform such Materials for the purpose of displaying and promoting the Materials on any website operated by, and in any related marketing materials produced by, the Company and its affiliates. They can keep and use your data forever and give it to whoever they want. The clause you quote doesn't alter that. All it says is that once a year, if you ask, they will tell you what information they shared and with whom. If they feel like it they will tell you how to get the information deleted.
No, it means you can't copy it. By default, the copyright to a work is owned by its creator, and nobody else is allowed to copy it, or create derived works, without their permission. That permission can be granted by a license. "License unknown" doesn't really tell us anything, but it certainly isn't clearly granting you permission. So you don't have permission to copy, and thus you cannot. You would have to seek permission from the copyright holder. See also If no licence is distributed with an application/source code, what license applies by default if any? (Some jurisdictions do allow for "fair use" exceptions, which allow you to copy a work without permission. You haven't said what jurisdiction you are in.)
Elon Musk doesn't own Twitter He is part of a consortium of investors that own it. What he can and can't do with it will be constrained by any agreements that exist between those investors and, as CEO, a duty to all of the shareholders and to the company itself. However, that jus begs the question: can the &quot;owners&quot; of a company dissolve it? Yes. Or, more precisely, the directors acting for the shareholders can cease operating the company, collect all that it is owed, pay all that it owes and distribute wherever is left over to the shareholders. If there won't be anything left over, then the directors have a duty to point an administrator/liquidator to finalise the company. One of these two things is, ultimately, what happens to every company sooner or later.
You can make a derivative work if: the original is not under copyright, you are the copyright owner, you hold a licence from the copyright owner that says you can, or your usage is fair use or fair dealing as applicable. For your proposal, the image is copyright, you don’t own it, you don’t have a licence and what you propose is neither fair use nor fair dealing. You can’t do it and you can be sued if you do.
Do fans legally have any ownership rights? Generally, no. It can be done if an agreement of the team is put into place when the team is founded or if the current owner agrees to it (which can then be binding on whomever the team is sold/transferred to). There are some leagues, such as the Bundesliga (Thank you Nij, for the correction; Sports in general are not my thing) where the clubs must be owned by fans, at least 51%. So it can be done, but cannot be forced on an owner against their will, unless such a covenant is agreed to before they take possession of the club. It can be required for a given club to join/participate in a given league. Legally, supporting a club via buying club merch and match tickets give an ownership interest in the items bought, not in the club/team itself.