Intellectual Property

Forming a Production Company

Protecting Yourself You will want to create a legal entities to regulate your film productions in the form of one or more production companies. This helps to protect the rights and livelihood of each partner in the film’s control structure. Commonly filmmakers would like to have an ongoing company that encompasses multiple projects, while having

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Ask Permission not Forgiveness

Protecting Yourself When it comes time for post-production, you will need to be able to send a huge list of deliverables to your distributor. The deliverables associated with intellectual property rights will be just one part of that list. (A couple of good articles by filmmakers documenting their trials with deliverables and tips for getting

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Security and Prevention

Protecting Yourself Making an independent film is exciting. You’re creating something wonderful to share with the world, and working with other brilliant people to make your dream a reality. But it’s also full of potential legal headaches. (And possibly also personal relationship headaches.) Here are some tips for security and problem prevention for your film.

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Hiring a Composer

Music is Complex If you want to have a very specific mood set by the film score, you will probably want to hire a composer. The benefits are having a custom made set of music tailored just for your film by a professional. But you will then have to pay attention to a new set

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Creative Commons

Budget but Beware Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that was started in order to increase the number of creative works that are available for others to reuse and share. It is a subset of copyright that replaces the usual “all rights reserved” mindset of standard copyright with “some rights reserved”. The Creative Commons licenses

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Fair Use

Budget but Beware Fair use is a set of limitations on the ability of copyright holders to claim infringement that are baked into the Copyright Act. The ability to claim fair use of a copyrighted work is primarily applicable to fact-based works, non-commercial or educational use, or commentary or criticism. Additionally, the work where fair

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Right of Publicity

Film IP Issues Technically, right of publicity laws apply to everyone, with regards what happens with their likeness. Most of the major cases apply to celebrities, but sometimes a regular person believes that their rights have been transgressed or that they have been insulted or defamed. A frequently cited example is when teenager Alison Chang

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Trademark

Film IP Issues Many people think that you can’t use any trademarked products in your film, because you might get sued by the company. This is why you sometimes see made-up or generic products or product names in film. However, nominative use – showing or referencing the product in name only – should be valid

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Copyright

Film IP Issues Each of us is a copyright owner. And each of us uses content or media that was created by another copyright owner. Technically, just by fixing an original work in a tangible form, such as a photograph, drawing, or piece of music, we have copyright. You can’t copyright a fact or an

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