If you are someone who creates, you may enlist other people to assist with your creative endeavors. Contributors and collaborators can take the form of illustrators, editors, indexers, consultants, researchers, background musicians, recording engineers, and others.
If you do not intend your collaborators and contributors to share ownership, you should clearly communicate your intentions and, most importantly, put your intentions into a written agreement. If you plan to share ownership of the creation, you and your collaborators should still have a written agreement which addresses ownership, creative control, division of costs and profits, and other issues.
Bad Things Happens When There’s No Written Agreement
The lawsuit over Spawn has been ongoing for about ten years. It all started when Todd McFarlane, the creator of the Spawn comic-book series, retained Neil Gaiman as a writer. Gaiman described and wrote dialogue for three Spawn characters: Medieval Spawn; Angela; and Count Nicholas Cogliostro. McFarlane then illustrated the characters.
McFarlane and Gaiman had no written agreement. Later, Gaiman claimed joint ownership in the copyright to the characters. The court agreed that Gaiman was a joint copyright owner since Gaiman had provided details for the characters including name, age, facial features, title, manner of speech, costume, and what each character knows and says. That ownership decision was made in 2004. The legal proceedings continue to determine Gaiman’s portion of the profits for the posters, trading cards, clothing, statuettes, animated series on HBO, video games, etc. that feature the three characters.
In another decision issued a few days ago, the court ruled that Gaiman also has a copyright and financial interest in three additional Spawn characters: Domina, Tiffany and Dark Ages Spawn. Although Gaiman did not directly participate in the creation of these three new characters, the court found that Domina, Tiffany and Dark Ages Spawn characters are derived from the characters, Medieval Spawn and Angela, which Gaiman did co-create.
