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If you don’t own the rights to your content, it could go places you don’t want it to go. Actor and musician, Jared Leto’s production company, Sisyphus, hired Naeem Munaf to shoot a video of Leto’s band for promotional purposes. The parties didn’t have a written agreement. In the video, Leto made some disparaging remarks about Taylor Swift. Realizing that he had a celebrity dis gold mine, Munaf sold the offending video to TMZ.com for $2,000. Two days after TMZ.com posted the video, Sisyphus had Munaf sign a non-disclosure agreement. Sisyphus’s team then registered the video with the U.S. Copyright Office and sued Munaf for copyright infringement. The court granted summary judgment for Munaf.
WHY YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS. Unfortunately, Sisyphus’s attempts to claim ownership of the video failed at every turn. Sisyphus didn’t own the video when it was created. Munaf, as the creator (or author) of the video, was the owner. Sisyphus couldn’t argue that the video was a work for hire because Munaf wasn’t an employee of Sisyphus. Having Munaf sign a non-disclosure agreement after the sale to TMZ.com was too little, too late. Munaf didn’t own the copyright at the time that he signed the agreement. Finally, registering the copyright didn’t help because Sisyphus never owned video. All of this could have easily been avoided if Sisyphus and Munaf had signed a written copyright assignment agreement at the time Munaf was hired.