Agreements and Copyrights – Worth Getting It Crystal Clear

Drawing up an agreement means that the parties assemble a list of things they have planned and agreed on either orally or in writing. What has been discussed in meetings or over the phone has been written down in a chronological order, the related email messages have been carefully saved and memos about the most important meetings have been sent to the participants.

Agreements are the post-it notes of the joint effort:
Contracting parties - Who are entering into an agreement to do something?
Content - What is agreed on and will be done?
Duration of the agreement - When will the job be done?
Legal validity of the agreement - Signatures!

The contracting parties are specified in the agreement as accurately as possible. The content may be divided into appropriate subdivisions (general division of duties, ticket sales, lighting, sound, scenery, spaces, keys, insurances, division of costs, division of revenue, etc.)

P.S. Juridicially, an oral agreement is as valid as a written one, but an oral agreement is much more difficult to verify than a written one. Sometimes it is a good idea to specify also the things that are not included in the agreement, which minimizes the risk of drawbacks caused by uninformed assumptions.

[Annex 2: SAMPLE CONTRACT - go to main page]

The Finnish Copyright Act grants the owner of copyright “the exclusive right to control a work by reproducing it and by making it available to the public”. “Available to the public” refers to the performance or display of the work in public. Whether the presenter charges a fee for the performance is not an issue, nor is the number of spectators. A copyrighted work of art must not be performed without permission, even if there is no audience. Copyright is personal and it subsists for 70 years after the author’s death.

Plays:
Nordic Drama Corner (Näytelmäkulma)
(foreign + Finnish plays)
Agency North
(Finnish + foreign plays)

SUNKLO.fi 
(Writers Guild)

Music:
Teosto
(composers, lyricists, arrangers, bands, music publishers)
Gramex 
(performers and producers of phonograms)

Other Forms of Art:
Kopiosto 
(authors, photographers, performing artists and publishers in all fields of creative work)
Kuvasto 
(visual arts and artists)
Tuotos 
(audio-visual products)
Sanasto 
(literary copyright holders)