What is it with copyright lawyers and fairy tales? First, we have Andrew "Werdna" Greenberg, Vice-Chairman of the Intellectual Property Committee for the IEEE, writing fables about abusive copyright laws (A Copyright Fable Relevant to the INDUCE Act (IICA) and Other News and INDUCE Act (IICA) Roundup - Friday the 13th). Now, C.E. Petit is waxing fanciful about a recent copyright work-for-hire case (Red Hot Dancing Shoes).

Normally, I consider work for hire cases as interesting as, well, something that isn't very interesting. However, the case Petit discusses is one that many technologists should be concerned about because many of them might find themselves in similar positions:

Once upon a time, in a metropolis far closer than I'd prefer, a famous dancer—you'd know the name, even if you don't pay much attention to dance—decided that she needed the limited liability and tax advantages of a corporate structure. She therefore incorporated her thriving business, and became the owner, chief executive, employee, cook, and bottle washer. She continued her successful choreography for many years thereafter.

Then she died. And thus, a lawsuit was eventually born.

The corporation (which had split, and changed names) continued to exist, and was not owned by her heir. Both the corporation and the heir wanted to control the copyrights in the choreography. The evil fairies lawyers convinced each side that they were in the right. And so, they took their dispute to the Court at the Castle on the Hudson. Really, the Post Office on the Hudson; but that's a different tale, involving dwarves, architects, extortion, and nastiness that doesn't belong in a bedtime story—even one calculated to scare the living daylights out of the listeners, like this one.

In the end, many of the copyrights stay with the corporation and don't go to the heir. Petit pulls out one important aspect of the holding:

[Appellant argues that] where a corporation is formed for the purpose of fostering a supportive environment in which an employed artist will have the opportunity to create new works, the default rule should leave the copyrights in the new works with the employee, and place on the employer the burden of pursuing a contract to obtain her copyrights. Whatever the intrinsic merit of such an approach, we conclude that its adoption is a matter of legislative choice for Congress in the future, not statutory interpretation for a court at present.

It's time for the moral now. Why should techies, and for that matter anyone else, care about fifty-year-old choreographic notation? Principally because programmers, and many others, who create intellectual property frequently resort to creating small corporations without adequate legal counsel....Now, children, it's not bedtime yet. I want you all to write fifty times "I will not neglect to clarify copyright ownership in employment agreements" on the inside of your eyelids.