Hello!

On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 6:30 PM, Sai Emrys <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 2:15 AM, Julia "Schnecki" Simon
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> He's commissioned the language, and he's going to use it,
>> but I'm the one who creates it, so I guess I'm the copyright holder
>> unless I explicitly sign away some rights
>
> Not necessarily. In this situation, US courts might interpret your
> conlang as implicitly a "work for hire" unless you have a contract
> explicitly saying otherwise.
>
> Works for hire have no copyright protections given to their author
> whatsoever under US law; they are entirely the property of the person
> hiring them and are an exception to almost every relevant law.
>
> No idea whether that's true of German law.

I've had a look at the relevant German legal text
("Urheberrechtsgesetz") and it looks to me as if works for hire count
as the *automatical* property of the person who hires the creator only
if the work in question is computer software. That's a bit strange (I
had expected the same set of rights and obligations to apply to *all*
kinds of creative work), but whatever. <scratches head>

And apparently, whatever I create is automatically subject both to
German and to Finnish copyright law. Both of them contain a clause
that says they're applicable to works created by a citizen of the
country (I'm German), by a foreigner residing in the country (my
domicile is in Finland), or by a person who's either a citizen of any
other EU country or whose domicile is in any other EU country (well,
they got me coming *and* going there). Fortunately, German and Finnish
copyright law don't seem to be all that different. Actually, the texts
of the two laws look suspiciously like one was translated from the
other, or they were both translated from the same source text. ;-)

(Incidentally, "Urheberrecht" and also the Finnish "tekijänoikeus"
seem to encompass more than just what Americans call "copyright"; if
I've understood all this correctly, American "copyright" roughly
corresponds to German "Nutzungsrecht", right to use/exploit. Or maybe
the terms *are* the same after all and it's just that American
creators are granted what Europeans would consider a rather
minimalistic set of rights... Well, I'm not a lawyer, let alone an IP
lawyer, so who knows. Anyway, the creator's Urheberrecht (literally
"creator's right") is something that always automatically belongs to
the creator, and can't be transferred to another person except if the
creator dies (in which case it's transferred to their heir(s) or
legatee(s) -- you can will it to a specific person, apparently,
instead of just relying on good ol' legal succession). And even if
someone else has the complete and permanent Nutzungsrecht, the creator
still has the right to veto certain uses of the work and even to
revoke the Nutzungsrecht under certain circumstances. However,
depending on the actual contract involved, the Nutzungsrecht may or
may not be transferred automatically to whoever hired the
creator/commissioned the work. I'd have to dig through my stacks of
paper to be sure, but I expect that if I did and found the contract
for my old techwriting job, I'd find a clause somewhere in there
concerning the automatic transfer of the Nutzungsrecht for all texts
produced by me for the company or a client *to* the company resp. the
client. I'm sure I have the right to veto certain uses of *those*
works of mine, but then my former employer would probably suddenly
notice that *they* object to my keeping the money they paid me for
writing the document(s) in question. ;-)

>> But I figure it's
>> better to know about things you're probably never going to need than
>> not to know and later notice you should. ;-)
>
> I agree. ;-)
>
> Which is also why I think the two of you should have at least an
> informal written agreement about how it's to be used or not used and
> who owns it.

Yes, we've had a brief mail exchange in the meantime and found we
agree at least on the basics (however he's going to use the language,
he'll always mention that I created it; I "own" the language and am
free to use and develop it no matter how much, or how little, *he*
ends up using it; this includes, among other things, my being
able/allowed to discuss the language, its creation process, and
similar things on this list; his involvement in the language creation
process will be minimal enough not to make him "co-creator"
(Miturheber) in the eyes of the law; etc.).

Inspired by various mails in this thread (as well as various use cases
I found during my Urheberrecht research), I've now sent him a list of
things we might want to put into such an informal written agreement in
addition to these obvious basics. While we're reasonably sure that we
won't end up suing each other over who is or isn't allowed to use the
language in what context, I'd still like to make as sure as possible
that (for example) if he ever leaves his group *they* don't get to
decide that *he's* not allowed to use the language anymore, or that if
I should die while he's still active in the group, my heirs won't be
able to force him or the group to stop using the language (or to pay
them royalties which, after all, *they* did nothing to earn). I've
also asked him if we should put something about the group's internal
terminology into the written agreement (they're pretty open about
their activities in a general way, but they *really* don't like to
give details to outsiders), so that I know exactly which technical
terms, names etc. I should avoid using in example sentences and the
like (would be nice to have an official list and/or instructions along
the lines of "don't use <some made-up military rank>, gloss your
language's word for it as 'colonel' instead"); or, for that matter,
whether words or grammatical constructions created by him or the group
without my involvement should count as a separate dialect (i.e. not
belonging to the official canon of "Julia's Super Roleplaying
Conlang[tm]") or what else.

My ideal situation would be something like this: I'm the creator (with
the usual (European, anyway) rights) but I'm granting my friend
permanent Nutzungsrecht, which he's free to extend to his group or
other third parties as he sees fit (and revoke it again if he so
chooses), without me or any heirs of mine being able to revoke this
right of his (because it's in the contract, dammit), and also without
preventing *me* from using and developing the language, publishing a
grammar, vocabulary, etc. (sans group-internal technical terms), or
giving permanent or temporary Nutzungsrecht to anyone else (and
revoking it again if I want, because *they're* not in the contract).
And nobody's getting any money at any point in the process, unless
someone (my friend, his group, some third party who happened upon the
language on the Internet or whatever) decides to use it in a
commercial work, in which case I'd like some royalties please.

(Oh bugger, now I need to add something about my languages to my
will... hmm, whom should I bequeath them to...)

Regards,
			Julia 8-)

-- 
   Julia Simon (Schnecki) -- Sprachen-Freak vom Dienst
_@"  schnecki AT iki DOT fi / helicula AT gmail DOT com  "@_
si hortum in bybliotheca habes, deerit nihil
                                        (M. Tullius Cicero)