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ASSISTANTS ARE NOT CO-AUTHORS
The planning or execution of advertising pho-tography work usually involves the participation of assistants. Whether the photographic or other work so completed should be regarded as the work of the main responsible person, or whether assistants should also be recognized as co-authors, is a controversial issue. The sig-nificance of being recognized as a co-author is that in the absence of an agreement to the con-trary, under the provisions of the Copyright Law co-authors share in the economic rights in the joint work. Additionally, the provisions re-garding the duration of economic rights and their assignment, enforcement, and extinguishment are also different in the case of joint authorship from those that apply when there is a single au-thor.
In a 2003 judgment, the Supreme Court noted that Article 8 of the Copyright Law provides that "a joint work is a work that has been completed by two or more persons, where the creation of each person cannot be separately exploited." In other words, it refers only to works created by the combined creative endeavor of two or more persons. When a photographic work is being photographed, the work of an assistant is mainly performed under the direction of the actual photographer. Such work of an assistant is aux-iliary in nature, and does not involve any indi-vidual creativity. Therefore a work completed in this way does not constitute a joint work within the meaning of Article 8 of the Copyright Law.
In addition to advertising photography, other activities such as translation; planning and graphic design for advertising copywriting; the writing, editing and translation of publications; the creation of musical works; movie script-writing and cinematography; and even the work of a lawyer's or architect's practice, often also involve the help of assistants. In the absence of special agreement to designate the owner of the economic rights in a work so created, the above Supreme Court judgment provides some guide-line for the apportionment of rights.