Re: FLASH: who owns the fla?

[Marc Hoffman, Poison Dart Frog Media]

At 12:23 PM 11/23/99 , you wrote:

>If one creates a Flash movie for a client do you give up the rights to

>the .fla file as well as the .swf when they pay you?  I have wondered

>about this from time to time, but now the question has come up with

>one of my sites.  If you give them the fla files you would lose

>control over what they did with it.  What do y'all think or do about

>this?

>

>Karin Christensen



Graphic Artists Guild has good information about this: 

http://www.gag.org/.  Many if not most digital artists, when they create a 

work for someone, are licensing a particular usage of their art. Copyright 

law varies from country to country, but the most common understanding under 

law and the courts is that artists retain the underlying copyright to a 

work that is commissioned. If you work as an employee for someone (that is, 

you pretty much work regular hours at their location and they give you the 

same benefits as other employees) you may be creating Work-for-hire, in 

which case the employer owns all rights to your creations. But otherwise, 

it's pretty standard that you retain the underlying rights, in which case 

the only thing you're agreeing to hand over is the thing that the client 

will actually use, such as a .swf file, and not the source file(s) from 

which it was built.


Of course it's always best for your protection and for business relations 

if all this is specified up front. That's where contracts are useful.



Marc Hoffman

marcdartfrogmedia [dot] com (mailto:marcdartfrogmedia [dot] com)

.

My Flash Portfolio: <http://www.dartfrogmedia.com/sampler>

(featured in Flash 3 Web Animation, by Ken Milburn)




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