In Brief:   It takes some work to prove up a missing copyright assignment.

The New Republic magazine published 44 film reviews written by famed film and theater critic, Stanley Kauffmann. The magazine didn’t hire Kauffmann to write the reviews. He wrote them, submitted them and the magazine printed them. The parties never really talked about who owned the articles. They never entered into a “work for hire” agreement.

If you don’t own the rights to your content, it could go places you don’t want it to go. %CUT% 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.