Today we are going to take a look at rights and here at
BigFish Media our voiceovers and their audio
productions are our top priority. Ok let’s move right along – see what we did
there?
What is intellectual property and why should
voiceovers know about it?
In the UK there are different forms of intellectual
property rights. They are all individual and have different duration periods.
They are all there to help you protect yourself against other people
duplicating or stealing your work. The work could be the names of your products
or brands, your inventions, the design or look of your products, the things you
write, make or produce. Amongst these is
trademark, copyright and what we discuss in a subsequent post will be
copyright.
What exactly is intellectual property?
An idea by itself is not intellectual property. What is
though, is what you do with it. So for example, it is something unique you
create physically. An idea for a film is not intellectual property but writing
the screenplay is. I have this idea for a plucky little fish that finds their
voice and when I get around to putting pen to paper then it will be
intellectual property.
So, who owns what?
There are three areas where IP rights can be owned.
Specifically, you own it if you created it (and it meets the requirements for
copyright, a patent or a design), you bought the IP rights from the creator or
a previous owner, you have a brand that could be a trade mark. So I could have
bought the rights to my Fish Story from someone else who either wrote it down
or someone who had the rights themselves.
Also note that intellectual property can have more than one
owner, belong to people or to businesses and can be sold or transferred. For example, my Little Fish Story could be
owned by me and my fishy friend who collaborated on it, or a team who I wanted
involved in it and should events happen that I find myself selling the story
then I could decide that a business could own it.
If you are self-employed like all of our voiceover artists
are then you usually own the intellectual property rights even if the work was
commissioned by someone else.
However, if you sign a contract, then that can change. This
is why it really is important to read that fine print. We always check all
contracts and NDAs so that you always retain ownership of your audio and we
won’t sign our voice talent up to things if they are asking you to give up that
particular IP right.
Now, for those non self-employed workers. If you happen to
create something as part of your work while you were employed by someone else
then you do not hold the intellectual property rights. In our next blog we will
talk about copyright for voiceover artists which
is an intellectual property right.
