Creator agreements with authors and performers
We will write the documents that move what your people make into the business that sells it, and say plainly which part of it no document is able to move at all.
Moral rights
Личные права
stay with the author
остаются у автора
Performer's rights
Права исполнителя
50 years from fixation
50 лет от записи
Copyright runs for
Срок охраны
at least life plus 50
минимум жизнь плюс 50
Presumed author
Автор по умолчанию
the name on the work
имя на самой работе
When you need creator agreements
You hired the artist by message
The brief was a chat thread and the payment a transfer. The work arrived, and the question of who now holds it was never written anywhere.
The team grew out of friends
People built the first version before the company existed. The entity that sells it today was not a party to any of that.
A human voice is in the build
Someone recorded lines, moved in a suit, or sang. A performance carries its own rights, and a contract for the recording does not cover them.
Your community makes the content
Players, readers or users upload what other people then pay for. What you may do with it is whatever your terms of use actually said.
An author wants their name back
A credit was dropped, or the work was cut for a new release. That objection does not depend on who owns the economic side of it.
What you get
- One signed document per creator
- A written list of what transferred
- Credit and change terms agreed
- Terms of use that hold
- Papers for work already done
What is required for creator agreements
Two different things happen when a person makes something for you, and only one of them is negotiable. The side that can be sold, licensed and warranted to an investor starts with the person who made it, unless the governing law says otherwise, and arrives at your business only on the day a document carries it across.
The other side does not move at all. Independently of the economic rights, and even after those rights have been transferred, the author holds a right to be named as its author and to object to distortion of the work that damages their reputation. A contract can shape how those rights are exercised in practice; what it cannot do is buy them.
Who you are signing with
An employee
The rules for work made inside a job differ from country to country, and some hand the employer more than others. The employment terms are written against the law that applies to that hire, so the answer stands on paper.
A contractor
An invoice settled changes nothing about who holds the result. The document has to state that the transfer happens, name what is being transferred, and take the shape the governing law asks of it.
A studio or an agency
The party you signed with is not always the party that did the drawing. The agreement has to reach the people behind them, or the chain stops at the supplier and starts again on the other side.
A performer
A voice, a body in a capture suit or a musician holds rights in the performance itself, separate from the recording. Sound and audiovisual are covered by two different treaties, and the wording follows the medium.
What the document settles
- What exactly moves: the files, the drafts and the material that never shipped.
- When it moves: on delivery, on payment, or on the day the last instalment clears.
- What the person may still do: portfolio, teaching, the right to say they made it.
- Credit: where the name appears, in what form, and what happens when a release drops it.
- Changes: who may cut, recolour, remix or retire the work, and what the author was told about that in advance.
Where the material was made before the document existed, we will write the paper that reaches backwards and say plainly what it does not reach. Finding out where the chain is broken across a whole company is an audit of the chain; letting somebody else use the result is licensing.
What no contract moves
The right to be named and the right to object to damaging changes stay with the author and survive the transfer of the economic rights, and the Berne Convention asks its member states to maintain them after the author’s death at least until the economic rights expire — with an exception some of them kept. How they are enforced is a matter for the law of the country whose protection is being invoked.
Sources: moral rights stand independently of the economic rights and survive their transfer; the minimum term is the author’s life plus fifty years; a name on the work in the usual way makes that person its presumed author, all under the Berne Convention. Performers hold a moral right and at least fifty years from fixation under the treaties on phonograms and on audiovisual performances.
Stages of work
Starting from the people who made it — 2–3 working days.
Everyone who made something that ships goes on one list: staff, freelancers, studios, performers, translators, the founder who drew the first icon.
Reading what was actually agreed.
Chats, invoices and briefs transfer nothing on their own. What they record is what each side thought had been agreed, and a paper reaching backwards is built out of exactly that.
Writing the forms you will reuse.
One form for employment, one for commissioned work, one for performances and one set of terms for what your users upload.
Closing what is already behind you.
For work delivered before any of this, we will prepare confirmations and get them signed while the people are still reachable and still willing. That window closes quietly.
Credit and changes, written down once.
Where the name appears, what happens to it in a remake or a port, and who approves a cut. Agreeing this in advance is what keeps a later objection from becoming a surprise.
Handing the process to your team.
A short rule for who signs what before work starts, and where the signed copies live, so the next hire does not reopen the same gap.
The wider practice this belongs to is IP & Content.
FAQ
Discuss
the Task
Speak to our team
Speak to our team. Tell us about your task –
we’ll help you with it in any jurisdiction.