How do I transfer copyright ownership in India? Suppose I have a friend who wants to transfer ownership of a piece of their artwork to me. What is the simplest way that my friend can do so? Assume that we both live in India.
This is governed by Section 19 of the Copyright Act, 1957 in India (see, e.g. here and here). In the cleanest scenario, the copyright is first registered and then transferred with a written assignment meeting multiple formal requirements of that section that is filed with the copyright registrar. The assignment document is only valid if it is written and duly signed by the assignor or their duly authorized agent or representative. The transfer of a copyright in work must recognize the work and specify the kind of rights assigned and the duration and regional extent of such transfer. Moreover, it must specify the amount of royalty payable, if any, to the author or their legal representatives during the continuance of transfer, and the transfer will be subject to extension, revision or termination on terms jointly agreed upon by the parties. If the time of transfer is not mentioned, it will be deemed to be taken as five years from the transfer date. If the regional extent of such transfer is not stipulated, it will be taken as applicable across India. Disputes over ownership of registered copyrights in India are usually handled by the Appellate Board connected to the Copyright Registrar's office, described in Section 11 of the Act, rather than by the ordinary courts.
Copyright law is not based on contracts, and does not require agreement. No one may distribute copies of a copyrighted work without permission from the copyright holder. For instance, in the US, both Persons A and F can be sued because Title 17, Section 501 of the US Code says: (a) Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner ... is an infringer of the copyright or right of the author, as the case may be. (b) The legal or beneficial owner of an exclusive right under a copyright is entitled ... to institute an action for any infringement of that particular right committed while he or she is the owner of it. Copyright infringement isn't an issue of violating terms you agreed to with a private entity. Your duty to not infringe copyright was imposed by your country's legislature, who does not require your personal agreement to do that.
No If YT#1 gets a license from artist A, that permits YT#1 to do whatever copying and reuse is stated in the license. It might be narrow or very broad. Usually such a license will only grant permission to the person who asked. Unless the license also grants permission to YT#2, or to some broader group which includes YT#2, YT#2 cannot claim any rights under such a license. Assuming that the license does not include him or her, YT#2 has the same rights as any member of the public would, but no more. In general, pitch raising a piece of music is a way of creating a derivative work. In the US, under 17 USC 106 one needs permission from the copyright owner to create a derivative work. Otherwise doing so is copyright infringement. The laws of other countries, and the Berne Copyright Convention have similar provisions on this point. Creating a derivative work requires permission in all countries that I know about. &quot;Piggybacking&quot; is not a thing in copyright law. A copyright owner can give permission (usually called a license) to any person or group of persons that the owner pleases. The permission does not extend to anyone else. This is true in all countries. I should be clear that YT#2 needs permission from both YT#1, and from A. The way the question is worded I have been assuming that YT#2 had permission from YT#1, but a comment from grovkin made it clear that I needed to be more explicit about this. It is possible for a license to permit a person to pass on the license to others. For example, all CC licenses and all copyleft and most open source licenses do this, and others could. But the license must explicitly grant such permission. The one way in which a person might create a derivative work without permission and without it being infringement is if an exception to copyright applies. In the US the main exception to copyright is fair use. See Is this copyright infringement? Is it fair use? What if I don&#39;t make any money off it? for more detail on fair use. Fair use decisions are made on a case by case basis, and generally depend on the detailed facts of the ase. But based on the limited info in the question, this would not qualify. It seems to use the whole piece of music, which tends to weigh against fair use. The new work does not seem to be transformative, that is, it seems to serve the same general purpose as the original. The new work might harm the economic value of the original, or might if many people did this. The original is creative, not factual. All of those weigh against fair use. Different countries have very different exceptions to copyright, and I do not know all of them. But the use described in the question does not seem to fit any that I know of. In any case, an exception to copyright applies to anyone, and does not depend on another person's license. It is thus never a form of &quot;piggybacking&quot;. By the way, the question describes pitch raising ads &quot;illegal&quot;. Making an unauthorized derivative work gives the copyright owner grounds to sue. If the owner does sue, and wins, s/he might be awarded money damages, and the court might issue an injunction ordering the infringer not to infringe again. But it would not normally be treated as a crime, and law enforcement would not be involved. In the US, only bulk copyright infringement, carried out as a business, is usually prosecuted (for example a factory churning out unauthorized music CDs).
I have found no evidence to suggest that a citizen under the age of 18 can't hold, or register for copyright in India. The copyright rules (http://copyright.gov.in/Copyright_Rules_2013/index.html) do not seem to impose any restrictions which would prevent persons of any certain age from holding a copyright. The e-registration page (http://copyright.gov.in/UserRegistration/frmLoginPage.aspx) for registering a copyright does not seem to impose any age requirements, but it does require the person to setup an account. The account registration page (http://copyright.gov.in/UserRegistration/frmNewUser.aspx) does not seem to impose any age requirements. The site terms of use (http://copyright.gov.in/termsCondition.aspx) do not seem to impose any age restrictions for using the site or it's services. The registration form &quot;Application Form for Registration of Copyright (Form-XIV)&quot; (http://copyright.gov.in/frmformsDownload.aspx) does not seem to impose any age requirements.
How can I find out whom the intellectual property now belongs to? For the patent, is this possible through the patent office? If it is a patent, the patent office; if it is a copyright, the copyright registrar. You could also look at the return from the auction in the bankruptcy court case file, which would control even if the patent office and copyright registrar records haven't yet been updated. You could also call the person who conducted the auction, or the lawyer who arranged for the auction, to ask. Often they would cooperate in telling you this information since a bankruptcy auction is, by definition, a public sale anyway, and cooperation might help them gain positive referrals from you in the future. If the assignee has not been changed in the patent register, is it possible to reassign the patent to myself, since the company has apparently neglected to do so? No. Doing this would be a form of fraud or embezzlement. The intellectual property became the property of the bankruptcy estate. If the bankruptcy estate is determined to have property not disposed of in the case, you would have to petition the bankruptcy court to have the remaining assets sold for the benefit of the creditors of the estate at fair market value. The Follow Up Questions I'm going to decline to answer the follow up question about how to arrange to purchase intellectual property from someone when you would like to own it, once you determine who the owner is. This is a more general question that applies to lots of circumstances and is as much a question of economics as law. There is an Ask Patents.SE forum, which might be a more appropriate place to ask that question.
That is not really a &quot;global license deal&quot;. You can try to attach strings to your US deal that makes you money when the US licensee sells out of the US. It is not typical and you may or may not have the leverage to get that agreement. Since you have no IP outside the US you can’t keep third parties from competing with them so it might not be good business for them. Also the SCOTUS has ruled that a contract licensing a U.S. patent can’t include royalties after the patent expires. In the past people negotiated deals where the royalties dropped in half (for example) after a patent expired. Although freely contracted and making business sense to the parties these royalties are not enforceable as a matter of public policy. It is possible that there may be a prohibition on contracted royalties where no IP exists. However you can license know-how, trademarks etc. independent of the term or existence of a patent.
First, the seller has not violated copyright law by selling you this book. Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley &amp; Sons, Inc. provides the precedent. The Supreme Court ruled that the First Sale doctrine applies to &quot;grey market&quot; imports of books, so buying a book cheaply in another country and then shipping it to the USA is entirely legal, regardless of what the publisher would like. The court wrote: Putting section numbers to the side, we ask whether the “first sale” doctrine applies to protect a buyer or other lawful owner of a copy (of a copyrighted work) lawfully manufactured abroad. Can that buyer bring that copy into the United States (and sell it or give it away) without obtaining permission to do so from the copyright owner? Can, for example, someone who purchases, say at a used bookstore, a book printed abroad subsequently resell it without the copyright owner’s permission? In our view, the answers to these questions are, yes. Wikipedia also has an article on the case. As for your recourse against the seller, this would seem to be very limited unless they specifically promised you the US edition, or the content is materially different between US and Indian editions. You don't say what kind of book this is. Textbooks typically have identical content. Fiction and other entertainment books generally have local idioms and terminology changed (e.g. &quot;pavement&quot; versus &quot;sidewalk&quot;) but will otherwise be the same. You might be able to claim that this is a material difference, but its likely to be difficult.
The notice has a lot to do with legacy requirements in the United States to claim the copyright to a work. Up until 1989, the copyright notice was required. Today, the statements are mainly maintained to protect against "innocent infringement" which might reduce what a content owner can get in court. What exactly do those terms entail? That the owner stated owns all rights and you may do nothing with the content. My biggest concern is this: by writing that, is the company claiming to own everything on the website, even potentially copyrighted user-submitted material? That's exactly what they are doing. Depending on the terms of the specific site, content contributors generally either assign copyright to the site owner or license the content in a way that allows the site owner to do exactly what they want with it. Site creators with the smarts or money to do it right/get someone to do it right usually state something like: Copyright [Site Owner] and contributors. Other sites (like this one) state specifically what they hold the copyright to: site design / logo © 2015 Stack Exchange Inc THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE. CONSULT AN ATTORNEY REGARDING YOUR SPECIFIC SITUATION.