Image copyright questions

[reyner]

Hi guys:

Just curious about the copyright law in different countries.

Say, if you create 3d images and animations, while working for a visualization company...do you have the right to show them after you leave the employment?
I mean..it is clear if you created them you have the authorship, not the ownership, but....can the previous employer prevent you from showing your own work to prospective clients (in case you go freelance) or to potential employers in order to show you skills and abilities?

I appreciate your comments

[tricky]

I suppose you'd have to check the fine print of a contract. If nothing is mentioned, I *guess* it'd be ok, but being an employer myself, I'd be pretty pissed off if the 'companies' images were being used to tout for work - after all, its the company thet got the business in the first place and they presumably would want to use the images to get more work for themselves.

Tough one.

(blimey - just read what I wrote - what a lot of wafffle!)

[Syclone1]

Here if you are working in house for a studio then you have NO rights to the ownership of anything you do as you are working in house for them as an employee which means that anything at all you create there, they own it completely. Prob about 50% of the companies here will let you show a certain amount of work but IMO I would refuse rights to my employees to show their work they created on my time as I would be taking the same work to future clients to get business and it can be uncomfortable showing a client your work only to have them question it as they seen it the previous day in another presentation.

Now if you are on contract or freelancing that's different as that sort of thing should be in the contract stating weather you can show the work for personal promotion.

I had to sign a big contract with the Co I'm currently with to the effect that anything I create here is solely theirs as far as ownership goes and basically unless I have written permission to show the work they can actually come back and sue me for doing so which I would never do as they just don't care about the quality of the finished product here as far as renderings go so I wouldn't want my self associated with them anyway :P

-dave

[tricky]

I would refuse rights to my employees to show their work they created on my time as I would be taking the same work to future clients to get business and it can be uncomfortable showing a client your work only to have them question it as they seen it the previous day in another presentation

My thoughts exactly.