Collective work

A creative work that represents the creative input of more than one author.

When two or more people share the copyright in a work they are referred to as “joint authors” A movie is a classic example of a collective work, involving as it does the efforts of hundreds, if not thousands, of people. Nevertheless, the rights to collective works are usually held by only one, or at most a few, people. In the case of a movie, most of the people working on it are treated, by their contract, as employees, rather than as joint authors.

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