Talk:Damnatus

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Funny thing is, copyright even in Germany doesn't work like that. He'd only own his additions to the franchise. They had already published their material in germany, protecting their interests. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.95.176.241 (talk) 06:43, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I edited the article slightly:
 * Copyright law everywhere in the world (where it exists) gives copyright to the creator of the work by default. The german specialty is that the copyright is unalienable and cannot be traded to anyone else through a contract. Otherwise GW would have made the creators sign a contract giving themselves the copyright.
 * GW only claims that they would lose copyright on the whole WH40k IP. Even the BBC article already linked in the article quotes a law professor who states that the legal situation is unclear.

From personal experience (I studied copyright law at a german university), the claim by GW is completely without substance, otherwise no derivative work would be possible at all in germany, and that is definitely not the case. The creator of the movie gains copyrights on the movie, not on anything that is used as a base for the movie. If that were the case, everyone that creates an advertisement would get a copyright on the product in the clip, which is of course completely ridiculous. I won't put anything on that in the article since it would be original research, and I can't find any court decisions on a similar case either, so for now I just have to let this claim stand. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.252.248.203 (talk) 14:07, 1 December 2009 (UTC)