copyright

Nine weeks ago, Nortel sold 6,000 of its patents for about $4.5 billion. Three weeks ago, Google paid $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility’s 17,000-plus patents. Google bought 1,000-plus patents from IBM in July and another 1,000-plus patents from IBM again this month.

Now, Kodak is looking to sell its digital imaging patents which may be worth $2 billion to $3 billion. This is more than the current value of the entire Kodak company which has a market value of about $210 millon. Kodak’s intellectual property is worth more than the company itself.

Intellectual property rights are the currency of the 21st century.

– Lesley Ellen Harris, “Digital Property: Currency of the 21st Century”

Like the Kodak situation, the copyright in a photo can be worth more than the photograph itself. Copyright has real value. But only if you’re smart about it.

Yesterday the Canadian government announced proposed changes to its Copyright Act.  While it contains many changes for music, video, performers, schools and libraries, it also has a some important changes that will affect photographers.

(Usual disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer so don’t believe anything after this).

Definition of Author

1) Bill C-32, the Copyright Modernization Act, proposes to repeal Section 10 of the existing Copyright Act. This will mean that the person who takes the picture will be the Author of that photo. This sounds obvious, right? But under current law, the party that owns the film or memory card used to take the picture is the Author.

“Author” is an important legal term because: (a) only the Author gets Moral Rights and (b) the default position is that the Author owns copyright, unless proven otherwise (more on this in section 2, below).

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