A joint work is created by two or more people with equal interests in the finished product. Contributions must be interdependent and inseparable. Co-authors have equal rights and can establish contracts. Contributors may be named or omitted. Joint authors cannot assign exclusive rights without consent. Conflicts may arise.
According to copyright law, a joint work is a work created by two or more people who share equal interests in the finished product. To be considered a joint work, the contributions of all authors must be interdependent and inseparable. So if someone writes forward to a book written by someone else, that’s not a joint work, but if a writer and illustrator collaborate to make a children’s book, for example, they would be considered joint creators. Works on commission can also be considered joint works, with the company or person who commissions the work having an equal interest in the copyright of the work.
Books, magazine articles, musical compositions, and works of art can all be joint works. The size of a contribution does not matter. If someone has contributed to a common work, that person shares an equal share of the copyright and has equal rights. Creators can establish a contract to clarify some points of their collaboration.
A co-author has the right to assign non-exclusive rights to another party without consulting the other authors. Similarly, joint authors may transfer their interest in the work to someone else, such as when someone wants a share in a copyrighted work to the heirs. The parts of a joint work cannot assign exclusive rights without the consent of the other authors. They must also account for any profits they make by exploiting the labour.
Contributions to a joint work must be seen as part of a seamless and interconnected whole. Without the work of one of the contributors, the piece would not have finished. Authors may choose to explicitly identify their contributions to the work, such as when authors write alternate chapters of a book, but they are not required to do so. Contributors are usually named, but in the case of people like ghostwriters, a contributor’s name may be publicly omitted from the finished joint work.
There are situations where it may not be beneficial to someone to have a finished product classified as a joint effort. Some people like to be able to control all the ways their work is used, and may not like the idea of other contributors assigning non-exclusive copyrights without consent. Similarly, if a conflict arises between creators, it may be difficult to reach agreements on work-related issues that require input from all authors.
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