Who owns the copyright for service work and commissioned work?

Who owns the copyright for service work and commissioned work?

The general rule is that copyright belongs to the author of the work. But there are exceptions to this general rule. In particular, in the case of creating a work in accordance with official duties or on order.

Service work - an original intellectual creation of the author (possible in various fields), which was created in cooperation between the employer (customer) and the author (employee) in connection with the performance of duties under the employment contract.

There are two types of copyright on a work:

• personal property rights to the work;
• non-property rights to the work.

The answer to the above question completely depends on which specific type of rights we are considering.

In particular, non-property rights always (!) and under any circumstances belong to the author of the work and cannot have any restrictions. The author will forever remain the father of his work, regardless of who commissioned this work. Non-property rights are a non-exhaustive list of the author's rights, such as the right to recognize the author as a creator, the right to integrity, etc.

Property rights, unlike non-property rights, can be transferred to other persons, which happens when creating official works and those works created to order. This is the fundamental difference between non-property and property rights.

According to the latest legislative innovations, in the case of the creation of a service work or a work created to order, the property rights will be fully transferred to the employer (customer) from the very moment of creation of such a work. But, since the parties (in our case, it is the employer (customer) and the author of the work) are free to enter into contracts, they can provide for other conditions of cooperation through an employment contract or another contract that will regulate property rights to the work.

Of course, there are certain exceptions.

In particular, if a work belonging to the field of fine arts (sculpture, painting, drawing, work of artistic design, etc.) is created by order, then the property rights of intellectual property will continue to belong to the creator (author).

So, summarizing the above, it is worth noting that when a work is created in connection with the performance of official duties or on order, it is worth distinguishing between property and non-property intellectual property rights, because:

• property rights will belong to the employer and the customer, unless otherwise stipulated by a joint agreement between them, and only (!) if a work of fine art is created, then in this case the property rights remain with the author of the work, of course, unless otherwise stipulated by the contract between customer and creator.
• non-property rights belong entirely to the creator, regardless of whether it is a service work or a work created to order.

Regardless of how exactly the work was created, it should be registered, because copyright registration, in addition to the "protective" function, serves as the "certificate" of the author.

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