[The plaintiffs included Noel Gallagher, the leader of the rock band “Oasis”, who
organized a secret photo-shoot in the grounds of a hotel for the cover of the
band’s forthcoming record album. Seeburg, a photographer employed by the
defendant newspaper, took surreptitious pictures of the scene. His photos
appeared in the newspaper and were also advertised as posters. The
defendant’s photographs were very similar to the one which was chosen for the
record album and which was taken by the band’s official photographer Jones.
Gallagher claimed that he was the author and copyright owner of the
photographs taken by the defendant’s photographer. The court rejected this
claim.]MR JUSTICE LLOYD:It seems to me that ordinarily the creator of a photograph is the person who takes it. There may
be cases where one person sets up the scene to be photographed (the position and angle of the
camera and all the necessary settings) and directs a second person to press the shutter release
button at a moment chosen by the first, in which case it would be the first, not the second, who
creates the photograph. There may also be cases of collaboration between the person behind the
camera and one or more others in which the actual photographer has greater input, although no
complete control of the creation of the photograph, in which case it may be a work of joint
creation and joint authorship...In the present case, however, it seems to me unarguable that anyone other than Mr Seeburg is the
creator of his photograph. Mr Gallagher set up the scene and may well have chosen or approved
the angle and other details of all or some of the official photographs taken by Mr Jones, in which
case Mr Gallagher is the creator, or one of the creators, of the official photographs. It seems that
Mr Jones does not claim to own the copyright in any of these. But Mr Gallagher had nothing to
do with the Seeburg photograph except to bring the subject matter into existence and of course
to form part of it himself. That does not make him its creator.- A person may be an author, even where he does not personally
execute all aspects of his expression
The U.S. Copyright Act grants copyright to a work that is fixed “by or under the
authority ofthe author”. This reflects the common principle that an author need
not do everything with his own hands to retain authorship.Andrien v. Southern Ocean County Chamber of Commerce, 927 F.2d 132
(U.S.: Court of Appeals, 3rdCir., 1991)[The plaintiff gathered existing maps of an area, verified distances and new
place names, and took the information to a printing company to create a new
map. He supervised an employee of the printer, who added lettering and
descriptions and generally did the artwork for the new map. When the plaintiff
sued the defendant for unauthorized copying of the map, the defendant
claimed that the plaintiff was not an author: instead, the printing company’s
employee was. The court rejected this defence.]JUDGE WEIS for the Court:[An author is] the party who actually creates the work, that is, the person who translates an idea(^108) into an expression that is embodied in a copy by himself or herself, or who authorizes another