Authorship, ownership and authorial rights

Among the problems raised by audiovisual works, the question of copyright entitlement has proved to be one of the most complex and controversial in copyright law, at both the national and international levels. These difficulties are closely connected to the way commercial theatrical films are generally produced. Problems arise not so much from the fact that they involve a number of contributors rarely equalled in other areas of copyright law. Rather, they are caused by the nature of the numerous contributions to the final work, which cannot be reduced to a single model for copyright purposes: products of highly specialised professionals, these contributions can be artistic or simply technical, and, when artistic, can cover the whole spectrum of copyright subject-matter (literary, artistic, dramatic and musical works) or amount to sui generis elements which are not separately protectable (mise-en-scène, editing); some can and some cannot be protected and exploited independently from the film; some exist before the film and some can be made at any stage of the production process; moreover, each production appears to involve different degrees in terms of creative responsibility and autonomy of contributors. This ‘atomisation’ of creative inputs makes the determination of the creator(s) difficult and the regime of exploitation of the final work particularly complex.