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Work for Hire Agreements Do Not Provide Beneficial Copyright Ownership
In order to sue for copyright infringement, it is necessary for the plaintiff to be either the legal or beneficial owner of the copyright in the infringed work. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has found that the creator of a work made for hire cannot be either a legal or beneficial owner of a copyright in such a work.
Richard Warren, the sole shareholder and employee of Triplet Music Enterprises, Inc., contracted with MTM Productions to compose music for the “Remington Steele” television program. Warren was required by a series of contracts to compose the music and MTM was to compensate Warren with a royalty percentage of all sales of broadcast rights to the television series made to third parties not affiliated with the performance rights companies BMI and ASCAP.
Warren sued MTM, its parent Fox Family Worldwide, Inc., The Christian Broadcast Network and Princess Cruise Line, Ltd. He claimed copyright infringement, breach of contract for failure to pay the full amount of royalties due and several other state law causes of action. He claimed to have created more than 1,900 musical works used in the television series, that MTM and Fox infringed his copyrights by continuing to broadcast and license the series without full payment and that the MTM licenses to CBN and Princess were invalid because they were made after MTM breached its agreement. Warren also claimed that MTM's breach caused the copyrights in the music to revert to him.
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