Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Key definition

Joint authors definition

What does Joint authors mean? In practice, joint authors are two or more people who collaborate to create a single copyright work where their respective contributions merge and cannot be separated. In the UK, this is defined by section 10(1) Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988; Ireland adopts a materially similar test under the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000. Each joint author must contribute original expression involving skill, labour and judgment; mere ideas, direction, editing or trivial input are insufficient (as clarified by case law). Key features and significance: - Collaboration and a common design to produce the work are required; if contributions are...

United States copyright law: joint authorship elements, default co-ownership and licensing rules, and collaboration agreement drafting

Published by a LexisNexis IP expert

Practice notes

ARCHIVED: This Practice Note is archived and not maintained. It was originally prepared for Lexis Practice Advisor®, in the US. It examines Joint authorship and Ownership of Copyrights under US federal law, including the elements of joint authorship, the default rules that apply to Joint authors, and drafting points for collaboration agreements.

Joint authorship overview

Before exploring the subtleties of joint authorship, it is useful to consider some fundamental copyright principles and how they relate to authorship.

Basic copyright principles

The Copyright Act grants authors of original works of authorship that are fixed in a tangible medium of expression a bundle of exclusive rights (ie a copyright) in their works for a period set by statute (ie the copyright term or duration). For more on exclusive rights, see Practice Note: US—exclusive rights of copyright owners [Archived]. For more on copyright duration, see Practice Note: US—copyright duration chart [Archived].

Breaking this down, for a work to attract copyright protection, it must be:

original — that is, independently created (rather than copied from another source) and showing ‘at least some minimal degree of creativity’. See Feist Publications Inc v Rural Tel Serv Co

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Web page updated on 22/05/2026

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