QUESTION
Choreography/work for hire...
Asked on Jun 07th, 2011 on Intellectual Property - California
More details to this question:
If I hire and pay a dance teacher to choreograph and teach an individual routine to my daughter and the teacher is an independent contractor (not an employee) of the studio that she teaches from would I have the right to use the choreography elsewhere without her permission or the studio's? In the studio's vague "contract" it states, "Team member (dancer) is responsible for any and all choreography and information given at practice." The request to use the "choreography" would in no way be for profit, misuse, or in any way interfere with their own use of the same choreography elsewhere.
1 ANSWER
Sports Attorney serving Sunrise, FL
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Nancy J. Flint Attorney at Law, P.A.
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"Work made for hire" is a commonly misunderstood aspect of copyright law. A creative work can be a work made for hire if it is (1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment or (2) a work specially ordered or commissioned in certain specified circumstances. When a work qualifies as a work made for hire, the employer, or commissioning party, is considered to be the author. Further, a work made for hire must be a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work; as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work; as a translation, as a supplementary work; as a compilation; as an instructional text; as a test; as answer material for a test; or as an atlas, and in those cases the parties have to expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work is a work made for hire. Choreography is not listed and so it is probably not a work made for hire. The only way that you could use the work without the dance teacher's permission is if the creator assigned the rights to you, or else you had a written agreement with the dance teacher.
Answered on Apr 28th, 2012 at 12:56 PM