QUESTION
does he have rights to the book?
Asked on Mar 18th, 2014 on Intellectual Property - Minnesota
More details to this question:
right now i am writing a set of books. one of my friends has been helping out a little by giving me ideas. he also came up with the idea of the enemy in the book. other then that i am doing everything else. he hasnt written anything and we had no signed document saying he is part author or anything. does he have any legal rights to the book right now or do i need his permission to use the group of enemies that he created for the book.
1 ANSWER
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Legal rights to a book vest initially in the author and can be conveyed only by a signed written document. Generally speaking, the author of the work is the person(s) who controls the creation of the work. Submission of ideas does not create authorship if you controlled which ideas were included and how they were included. An editor will often provide an author with ideas for reshaping a draft to produce a book and the contributions of the editor do not amount to authorship. When a book is made into a movie, the author of the book is not regarded as the author of the movie (although the author does have rights in the movie because it is derivative of the author's copyrights in the book).
Good luck,
Todd
Answered on Mar 19th, 2014 at 10:04 AM