No, this isn't about Frankenstein trying to control his monster, or robot creations run amok - though both of those can be interesting stories - but about the control of your intellectual creations, the products of your own creativity. After recommending the Copyright Handbook and other Nolo Press publications I thought this might be a companion piece for the discussion of intellectual property. We will be coming back to this subject in the future, I'm sure, but here's this week's installment.
One of the many Nolo Press publications that can help you learn about intellectual property and the laws that govern it.
At first blush you may not think this column applies to you, and that is always possible with every column. That's one of the reasons for the variety of content presented: If today's topic doesn't interest you or apply to the way you are expressing your creativity, maybe next week's recommended reading will, or you'll find your creative community through the Discord channel via Patreon, or you'll learn something from another reader's comment.
In another column I talked about the hard conversations we have to have with our loved ones, and I have mentioned intellectual property (IP) a time or two. IP is a huge subject. It has enough complexities to fill several courses in law school, and supports entire legal practices with its nuances. Anything written here is strictly to familiarize you with the concept; for anything else I strongly advise you consult an expert, which I decidedly am not (nor do I claim to be).
This guy may think he's an expert, but even his crystal ball isn't going to give you the information you need to make good decisions.
The most basic definition of intellectual property is "a work or invention that is the result of creativity ..." (thanks, Google!). At the most basic level IP simply means if you create something-a song, a story, an original painting, a needlework design-it belongs to you and you control how it gets used.
From there it gets complicated (REALLY complicated). If you want to maintain some control over your creations, you will need to learn a bit about IP, you may want to get some professional advice, and you will have to have one of those hard conversations with your heirs about what to do with the property after you're gone.
Very simply, everything you create is a piece of property that will be passed on to your heirs. Your creations may have sentimental value, they may have commercial value, or some combination of the two. For instance, I have an antique china hutch that was created by my great-grandmother's father as a wedding gift to her and her new husband, before the turn of the last century. I have no idea what its value is as an antique, but it's sentimental value is enormous.
Who knows what you might have locked away? More to the point, who should know?
Whatever their value, those properties need to be included in your estate. Don't assume that "somebody" will take care of them. If your creations have commercial value they will need to managed and marketed in order to maximize their value to your estate, and that will take some work and some knowledge.
Look at things like the Elvis Presley estate. Mismanagement had reduced the value before Presley's death, yet his heirs are some of the richest people in the country because they managed his estate properly.
Michael Jackson? His heirs fought each other in court and in public, and the battle continued for more than 10 years and cost thousands – or millions - of dollars.
I know someone who was heir to a best-selling author's estate, but management of the creative property was placed with someone else who did not handle it properly and the value dropped to almost zero.
I recommended this book a few weeks back. It has some horror stories about what happens when intellectual property is mishandled.
You may not think your paintings or your stories or your songs are worth much, and maybe they aren't. But whether they are or they aren't you need to have a hard conversation with your family, your heirs, to make sure that "somebody" is ready to take responsibility for them.
Or not.
You can, quite honestly, abandon your creations, assume they will not live on after you're gone. You can decide they won't have continued value and simply ignore the entire topic. Who cares what happens to them once their creator is no longer around?
You could just choose to blow it all to smithereens, though I don't advocate that. If that's your choice, you may need this!
That is a perfectly valid decision. But who among us hasn't had that fantasy, just once, that something we create will catch on with the public, that our song will hit the pop charts, or our book will become a best-seller, or our painting will make it to the auction block at Sotheby's?
If you haven't paid any attention, if you haven't learned at least a little bit about intellectual property, that moment could come at any time and you (or your heirs) will watch your creation used to sell soft drinks without anyone being paid for that use.
In addition, you need to educate yourself about the basic business model of your chosen creative endeavor - How do galleries function when they display your sculpture or pottery or paintings for sale? What are the basic parts of a publishing contract? How are needlework or cabinetry patterns distributed? - and that information needs to be passed along to whoever takes responsibility for your IP when you can no longer do it.
In that I am fortunate. My son trained as a lawyer. I didn't have to explain to him what intellectual property is, but we have had several long discussions about how to handle the rights to my books and stories, about how publishing works, and how to generate income for him and his sister.
You may find all of this hard to believe, and as I said you can choose to ignore the possibilities. Like my friend and their child who cannot bring themselves to have this discussion you may find this conversation too uncomfortable to even consider, because you don't believe a financially rewarding outcome is even possible. That is your choice.
On the other hand, I seriously doubt that Edgar Rice Burroughs could have foreseen his character, John Carter of Mars, would be the title character of a movie made 100 years after Carter's first fictional appearance in the pulp magazine The All-Story.
This issue of The All-Story from 1912 contained an installment of Burroughs' "Under the Moon of Mars." After several mergers and name changes The All-Story merged with The Argosy in 1920.
You never know.