Copyright transfer agreement

A copyright transfer agreement or copyright assignment agreement is an agreement that transfers the copyright for a work from the copyright owner to another party. This is one legal option for publishers and authors of books, magazines, movies, television shows, video games, and other commercial artistic works who want to include and use a work of a second creator: for example, a video game developer who wants to pay an artist to draw a boss to include in a game. Another option is to license the right to include and use the work, rather than transferring the copyright.

In some countries, a transfer of copyright is not legally allowed, and only licensing is possible.^[1] In some countries like the United States^[2] and the United Kingdom,^[3] copyright transfer agreements generally must be in writing and must be signed by the person transferring the copyright. In many countries, if an employee is hired for the purpose of creating a copyrightable work for an employer, that employer is by default the owner of the copyright,^[1] so no copyright transfer agreement is necessary. In many countries that recognize the moral rights of creators, those rights cannot be transferred, and copyright transfer agreements only transfer economic rights.^[1]

In academic publishing, copyright transfer agreements do not normally involve the payment of remuneration or royalties.^[4] Such agreements are a key element of subscription-based academic publishing,^[5] and have been said to facilitate the handling of copyright-based permissions in print-only publishing.^[6] In the age of electronic communication, the benefits of copyright transfer agreements have been questioned,^[7] and while they remain the norm, open licenses as used in open access publishing have been established as an alternative.^[8]