From THE STAGE WRITERS HANDBOOK by Dana Singer:
"In the absence of a written agreement, the law provides a presumption that the collaborators intended to create a 'joint work,' and that each collaborator, as a joint owner, has an undivided ownership interest in the whole product. This means each collaborator retains an ownership interest in ALL the elements, not just those to which he or she contributed. (It's not necessary for individual contributions to be equal, either in quantity or quality. It doesn't matter if one person creates music and another creates the book and lyrics, or if one person conceived the project and therefore has a greater emotional stake in it: The collaborators will be deemed joint owners if there is no collaboration contract.)
If collaborators work together for a while and then one decides to break up for whatever reason, in the absence of a written collaboration agreement he or she cannot simply say, 'I'm taking what I contributed and leaving,' because the other collaborators can reply, 'You can't do that because we share ownership with you.' Under such circumstances, if the collaborators can't come to an agreement about how to break up...the work already completed cannot be used again in other ways (such as removing songs to use in a different musical) and the work can't be marketed on an exclusive basis..."
Updated On: 9/28/04 at 05:45 PM
