Say, for instance, that you come across a creative work you believe can possibly benefit the promotion of your business’s product or service. Upon further investigation, you may be unable to identify its copyright protection information, so you may track down the author or creator and propose a potential licensing agreement. With this, you may be unsure if this creative work even has such legal protection in the first place. Well, you may have just encountered what is known as an orphan work. Without further ado, please continue reading to learn about orphan works within copyright law and how an experienced New Jersey copyright lawyer at The Ingber Law Firm can help you approach this.
What are orphan works according to copyright law?
Under copyright law, an orphan work is considered a copyrighted work that is rather difficult or nearly impossible to identify or locate the author or creator for, despite reasonable efforts. Examples of what could be orphan works are old photographs, old music recordings, and old pieces of literature. Orphan works may be a bigger issue amongst copyrighted works than you originally imagined. This is because such a work may become orphaned under any of the following circumstances:
- The work may have never been publicly published.
- The work may have had an original author or creator that was never publicly known.
- The work may have originally been published with the author or creator using anonymity.
- The work may have had a rightful inheritor but additional details cannot be found about them.
- The work may have a known original author or creator but contact information was lost over time.
Is it possible to legally use an orphan work?
Unfortunately for you, the United States Copyright Office has not passed any specific federal laws regarding how to use orphan works legally. However, there are still ways you can help yourself curb potential risks when wanting to use orphan works.
First and foremost, you have a duty to conduct diligent research on the creative work. This should entail looking through copyright registries; consulting with professionals in your business field or intellectual property for any leads; and reaching out to the original author or creator with any contact information you find. After this investigation, you may realize this copyrighted work is not an orphan work after all. If not, you at least have evidence of your due diligence in case a potential copyright infringement claim arises later on. On top of all of this, it may not hurt to hire legal representation before using an orphan work publicly.
This blog is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to intellectual property laws in the state of New Jersey. So for more information, please reach out to a skilled Essex County, New Jersey intellectual property lawyer from The Ingber Law Firm today.
