On 16/07/2014 9:12 AM, Sönke Ludwig wrote:
As far as I know, this is the "Verwertungsrecht" (roughly the right to distribute) and the "Nutzungsrecht" (the right to use). Both can be granted to third parties using a proper license, or using a work contract.
Thanks, that could be useful ^^
I think what we need here isn't really a change of the ownership, but rather a proper license, either a liberal public license (e.g. some CC variant), or a personal license for Walter that grants him all rights to use, distribute and relicense the logo.
I haven't been able to find a licence that grants the appropriate permissions because all the common public ones are about non-exclusive rights. If the graphic just had a CC license, other organisations would have just the same usage rights as Digital Mars. The graphic could have a more restrictive license and then Digital Mars could have additional rights granted separately, but that wouldn't really help. Crafting a new license is dangerous territory that I think is best avoided.
Having said that, I'm pretty sure that he can still transfer the "copyright" according to U.S. laws to another person. It's just that he could then possibly still sue the person according to German laws. So a license would probably be the best bet.
That is my understanding too. There are no standard forms for this, it only requires a signed letter from the creator, and there isn't even a requirement for the transaction to be registered in any way (although it can). Because international law is so hand-wavy, such documents often include clauses that state what jurisdiction disputes are resolved under and even waivers for things like the right to sue, but to get things like that right, you need at least 2 lawyers.
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, so this is just my limited personal understanding of the matter.
I'm optimistic that this can all be resolved without having to get any lawyers involved, but it is a shame that the intersection of D-users and international-copyright-lawyers seems to have a cardinality of zero.
A...
