About This Service
Talent management in the field of copyright means that a creator's property interests are governed through defined legal instruments: the transfer of rights, an exclusive license, and a contract for the creation of a work. The Law of Georgia on Copyright and Neighboring Rights sets clear rules for each of them: Article 36 governs the transfer of property rights, Article 37 the exclusive license, and Article 43 the contract under which a work is created on commission. This page explains what these contracts may and may not contain, who keeps the rights that the contract does not expressly mention, and how restrictions on a creator's future work are struck down.
The Transfer of Property Rights
Article 36 lays the general foundation: an author or other holder of copyright may transfer all property rights, or part of them, to a successor. The transfer may therefore be total or partial — by specific rights or by specific manners of use. In talent-management practice this norm drives a whole series of decisions: which rights remain with the creator, which pass to a management team or producer, and within what limits they may be administered. The scope of the transfer is always defined by the particular contract, which is precisely why it matters that the contract reflects exactly what is transferred and what is not. Where the transfer is partial, the remaining bundle of rights stays in the creator's hands and may be exploited independently; where it is total, the successor administers the entire property sphere of the work. The choice between the two is a matter of commercial strategy, but its legal form is fixed by this norm alone.
The Exclusive License
Article 37 defines the exclusive-license contract: under it, the author or other holder gives only the licensee the exclusive right to use the work in the manner and within the limits defined by the contract, and grants that same licensee the right to prohibit such use of the work by other persons, including the author. This nature of the exclusive license distinguishes it from arrangements in which a right of use is granted to several persons: here the defined manner of use belongs to the licensee alone. The law also protects the underlying interest: the author may exercise the right to prohibit use of the work by other persons if the licensee does not pursue the protection of that right. Exclusivity governs the market only when someone defends it: with a passive licensee, the author moves into the position of self-defense. For talent management this means that managing an exclusivity requires active monitoring, and that the boundaries of use defined by the contract should be drafted so that unauthorized use by third parties is easy to detect.