Chain of Title For Copyrights, Trademarks, and Rights of Publicity
In the motion picture industry, the chain of title involves the series of documentation which establishes proprietary rights in a film. The chain also applies to compilations in other fields, where many people have contributed to the project, thus acquiring authorship rights, or where materials were culled from many sources. Chain of title is extremely important to film purchasers and to film distributors, as it establishes the veracity of the owner's proprietary rights (or rights under license) in the intellectual property in a film, book or encyclopedia.
Chain of title documentation can include:
- copyright clearances on music from the regional collecting society, and to a less common extent, footage of other films;
- trademark clearances;
- talent agreements, which should incorporate a legal release from the talent, be they actors (including crowds), directors, cinematographers, choreographers, or others, to use their works, images, likeness and other personality rights in the film;
- proof of errors and omission insurance (a special form of insurance for motion picture producers which covers omissions in obtaining adequate chain of title).
Specialist organizations engage in the production of copyright property reports for motion picture studios, which cover original or unexploited works, and include the results of United States Copyright Office screening searches, author claimant searches, registration renewal searches and assignment searches. This involves reviewing US Copyright Office records from 1870 to present and numerous trade publications and databases, and Library of Congress records.
Read more about this topic: Chain Of Title
Famous quotes containing the words chain of, chain, title, rights and/or publicity:
“It could not have come down to us so far,
Through the interstices of things ajar
On the long bead chain of repeated birth,
To be a bird while we are men on earth,”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world—and never will.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child. He must take to pieces the whole web of his mind. He must unlearn much of that knowledge which has perhaps constituted hitherto his chief title to superiority. His very talents will be a hindrance to him.”
—Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859)
“A hundred things are done today in the divine name of Youth, that if they showed their true colours would be seen by rights to belong rather to old age.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“Is America a land of God where saints abide for ever? Where golden fields spread fair and broad, where flows the crystal river? Certainly not flush with saints, and a good thing, too, for the saints sent buzzing into man’s ken now are but poor- mouthed ecclesiastical film stars and cliché-shouting publicity agents.
Their little knowledge bringing them nearer to their ignorance,
Ignorance bringing them nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)