Assignment of Copyrights

Copyright grants authors a set of personal property or economic rights in their original work. These rights include the ability to reproduce, create derivative works, publicly perform a work, publicly display visual works, and digitally transmit sound records. They are solely the property of a copyright holder.

The person who created the work is usually the copyright holder. However, any of these economic rights, or a portion of them, can be transferred. An artist's moral rights in a work of fine art can be waived but not assigned under the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA).

Economic rights can be transferred on an exclusive basis, which necessitates a written agreement, or on a non-exclusive basis, which does not necessitate a written agreement. This is most commonly accomplished through assignment or licence. An assignment is similar to a sale, as opposed to a licence, in which the copyright owner retains ownership. The original copyright owner sells the rights to a third party and has no control over how the rights are used, just as they have no control over how personal property they sold is used once transferred.

Assignments can be used for a variety of purposes, including debt security, asset transfer to heirs, and asset distribution following a bankruptcy proceeding. When you assign your rights to someone else, you permanently relinquish your right to control the work. That is, even if you created the work, if you try to exercise any of the rights you have assigned, you are committing copyright infringement. If you assign your copyright to someone else and later regret the loss, you may be able to buy it back from that person, but the assignee decides whether or not to sell it back to you.