Author Contract with Licence or Assignment?The approach to intellectual property rights varies from author contract to author contract.
Some kinds of publishing companies (e.g. trade publishers) usually receive a licence of copyright from their authors, while other kinds of publishing companies (e.g. many educational, professional and academic publishers) demand an assignment of copyright.
A licence of copyright is a permission to do acts that would, but for the licence, be prohibited under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988; by contrast, an assignment of rights is a transfer of ownership/title of those rights. An exclusive licence of rights can be so broad that its effect is similar to an assignment of rights.
One of the most important differences between the licences and assignments of copyright in our various template author contracts is that, upon termination of the contract, licensed rights will revert to the author, while assigned rights will remain with the publisher.
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Royalty or Fee Based Author Contracts?Authors are most commonly paid by way of a royalty.
The royalty level in an author contract will usually vary depending upon the form of exploitation in question. For example, authors may get a better royalty rate in relation to digital exploitation than they may get in respect of traditional volume-form exploitation. Royalties may be calculated by reference to a cover price or (more commonly these days) by reference to the publishing company's net receipts. Many author contracts will provide for authors to receive an advance on royalties.
The other method of payment is the fee. Obviously, a fee may be paid in instalments, and can be linked to the author meeting deadlines.
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Premium, Standard or Basic Author Contract?Each of our author contracts comes in three types: premium, standard and basic.
The standard author agreements contain all the provisions of the basic authors agreements, with a number of additions; similarly, the premium author contracts contain all the provisions of the standard documents, with a number of additions.
In addition to the provisions in the basic contract templates, the standard documents include optional provisions covering the following matters: joint / multiple authors, an index, more detailed treatment of the parties' obligations, revising the work, new editions, remainders, licences to the CLA, ownership of intellectual property in the work's title, termination in the event that a work goes out-of-print, and contract notices.
In addition to the clauses in the standard contracts, the premium author contracts include optional provisions covering: infringement actions where the copyright in the work has been infringed, limitations of liability, an option over future works, payments to agents, termination upon a change of control, ADR, and marketing.
Unlike the basic and standard templates, the premium templates include an index.
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