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Video Music Rights

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What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? North Carolina

Our non-profit company had a video done for us by an outside vendor back in October of this year who gave us a very good price. It's about our organization and services. We paid him and are very happy with the video.

Two months later (now): Another video was created, but this time, in-house by us, and we used (edited in) a short clip from the video we had done and bought earlier by this outside vendor.

I am sure we own the rights to the video/video clip, but do we own the rights to the music in the video clip if he purchased it/supplied it for the original video? In short, do we own all rights to the video and music from an outside vendor once we've bought it, and can we use it in another self-made video?

Thanks You
Ken
 


quincy

Senior Member
Did you have a written and signed work made for hire agreement with the outside vendor?

A work made for hire is a work created by an employee within the scope of his employment and all of the rights in the work created by the employee belong to the employer. Or a work made for hire is created under a written contract signed by both parties and all of the rights in the work created by the one party will belong to the party who commissioned the work.

If neither of the above applies, your non-profit company owns only the single video that was created by the outside vendor but none of the copyrights in the work. You would have paid only for the one video. The copyrights in the work (the right to reproduce the work, distribute the work, display the work, prepare adaptations of the work) are retained by the outside vendor who created the work.

I assume the outside vendor obtained licenses to use the music he used for the video? Any license would outline the extent of the rights granted to the vendor by the holder of the music rights.
 
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