Director’s get the film copyright

The HRD ministry has come up with a bill which confers copyright of a film not just upon the producer, but also on the director. For films made after the proposed law comes into force, the producer and director will be treated jointly as the first owner of copyright. Thus, the director is finally getting his due as the creator. The joint ownership redresses an anomaly in the Copyright Act 1957, which in the case of books, confers copyright on the author leaving out the publisher but in the case of films, on the producer leaving out the director. The existing law treats a director as an employee of the producer and consequently denies him any intellectual right over the film he creates. Since the proposed clause equating the director with the producer will apply prospectively (from the day the law is enacted), the directors of films already produced will not get the full benefit of this reform. The bill seeks to compensate them by extending the copyright term for such films from 60 years to 70 years after the death of their first copyright owners. The additional copyright term of 10 years is however subject to the principal director entering into a written agreement with the owner of the copyright in the film during the subsistence of copyright. The accompanying note explains that this is meant to extend the copyright term for the producer for another 10 years if he enters into an agreement with the director. The implication is that for the additional term of 10 years, the …
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