Creative Commons Canada

["Kaplan-Myrth, Andy" <akaplanmyrth AT ogilvyrenault.com>]

Hi all,

There are two concerns with the draft licence that I'd like to raise.

s. 14(1) of the Act provides that any assignments or grants of interests
in a copyrighted work is inoperative beyond 25 years after the death of
the author. This must include a CC licence. You can't get around this by
including some sort of waiver in the licence, because the Act provides
that, "notwithstanding any agreement to the contrary", interests revert
to the estate of the author. This is only true where the author is the
first copyright owner, but that will almost always be the case for CC
works. Maybe this isn't a fundamental concern, but it might be worth
pointing out somewhere (since people don't generally know about this
provision) that the licence will not be in effect for the duration of
the applicable copyright (as you state in CCC s. 3), but rather for 25
years past the death of the author-owner.

s. 57(3) provides that "any licence granting an interest in a copyright
... shall be adjudged void against any subsequent ... licensee for
valuable consideration without actual notice, unless the prior ...
licence is registered ... before the registering of the instrument under
which the subsequent ... licensee claims". By my reading (please correct
me if I'm wrong!), this means that a CC licensor can revoke the CC
licence by simply granting another licence. The fact that the prior
licence said it was perpetual may not stand up against the operation of
s. 57 given the presence of a subsequent licence. There may be caselaw
on that point -- unregistered prior assignment versus subsequent
assignment granting rights before expiration of the prior assignment.

Are there any other provisions lurking in the Copyright Act that might
cause a CC licence to terminate early?

Andy Kaplan-Myrth
Student at Law, Ogilvy Renault
Law Student, University of Ottawa
613-780-8670
akaplanmyrth AT ogilvyrenault.com 
 
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