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means that any of the exclusive rights that go to make up a copyright, including those enumerated in section 106 and any subdivision of them, can be transferred and owned separately. The definition of “transfer of copyright ownership” in section 101 makes clear that the principle of divisibility applies whether or not the transfer is “limited in time or place of effect,” and another definition in the same section provides that the term “copyright owner,” with respect to any one exclusive right, refers to the owner of that particular right. The last sentence of section 201(d)(2) adds that the owner, with respect to the particular exclusive right he owns, is entitled “to all of the protection and remedies accorded to the copyright owner by this title.” It is thus clear, for example, that a local broadcaster who has an exclusive license to transmit a particular work within a particular geographic area and for a particular period of time could sue, in his own name as copyright owner, someone who infringed that particular exclusive right.
Subsection (e) provides that when an individual author’s ownership of a copyright, or of any of the exclusive rights under a copyright have not previously been voluntarily transferred, no action by any governmental body or other official or organization purporting to seize, expropriate, transfer, or exercise rights of ownership with respect to the copyright, or any of the exclusive rights under a copyright, shall be given effect under this title.
The purpose of this subsection is to reaffirm the basic principle that the United States copyright of an author shall be secured to him, and cannot be taken from him by any involuntary transfer. It is the intent of the subsection that the author is entitled, despite the expropriation or transfer, to continue exercising all rights under the United States statute, and that the governmental body or organization may not enforce or exercise any rights under this Act.
It sometimes be difficult to ascertain if a transfer or copyright is voluntary or is coerced by covert pressure. But subsection (e) would protect foreign authors against laws and decrees which would divest them of their rights under the United States Copyright Act. It would protect authors within the foreign country who choose to resist such covert pressures.
Traditional legal actions, such as bankruptcy proceedings and mortgage foreclosures, are not within the scope of this subsection since the author has, in one way or another, consented to these legal processes by his actions.
SECTION 202. DISTINCTION BETWEEN OWNERSHIP AND MATERIAL OUTPUT
The principle restated in section 202 is a fundamental and important one: that copyright ownership and ownership of a material object in which the copyrighted work is embodied are entirely separate things. Thus, transfer of a material object does not of itself carry any rights under the copyright, and this includes transfer of the copy or phonorecord—the original manuscript, the photographic negative, the unique painting or statute, the master tape recording, etc.—in which the work was first fixed. Conversely, transfer of a copyright does not necessarily require the conveyance of any material object.
