Creative collaborations have become common practice in many creative businesses from advertising agencies to theatre productions. Some such collaborations arise from working closely with colleagues while others are more anonymous; for example, on file-sharing sites such as YouTube. From a legal point of view, however, collaborations can be a mess. It's therefore important to avoid future disputes by sorting out ownership of collaborative work from the outset. This video will give you an overview of relevant legislation and how you can avoid common pitfalls when working with others – online and offline. A lawyer defines 'collaborations' from a legal perspective; a practitioner, who regularly collaborates with others, talks about best practice and finally a representative from the UK's Intellectual Property Office (IPO) talks through the services that the IPO provides and how to register your IP once you have sorted out the all important question of who owns what in the resulting work.

Topics covered include:

* What kind of collaborations exist? From collaborations within an advertising agency (where everybody is employed) to anonymous collaborations creating derivative work from somebody else's creation (which is some sort of collaboration as two people have contributed).
* Which IP rights are relevant? From copyright to trade marks.
* What is Creative Commons and how can it be used to collaborate – and make money?
* Why is it so important to define the part of each collaborator when you want to exploit the work you produce together?
* And how and when do you discuss this matter with your collaborator/s?
* What happens when you can't define the parts of your contribution because you are working very closely, say on a script, and you are both contributing ideas/writing?

Speakers:
Tom Coulson, solicitor, Commerce and Technology, and Harry Karaolou, solicitor, Intellectual Property and Media, at Lawrence Graham LLP.

Dave Hopkins, Business and Outreach, Intellectual Property Office.

Cefn Hoile founder-member of the CuriosityCollective.org digital arts group and a regular contributor to open source projects and not-for-profits.

This video is a result of a seminar held by Own-it on 9 December 2010. It was organised in partnership with the IPO.