Collective work is defined as a work, such as an issue of a magazine, an anthology or an encyclopedia, in which a number of contributions, constituting separate and independent works in themselves, are assembled into a whole, see 17 U.S.C. §101.
In copyright law, a copyright to a contribution to a collective work is not the same as the copyright to the collective work.
In New York Times v. Tasini, the Supreme Court held that “when a freelance author has contributed an article to a ‘collective work’ such as a newspaper or magazine, the Copyright Act, recognizes two distinct copyrighted works.
- Copyright in each separate contribution to a collective work is distinct from copyright in the collective work as a whole [17 U.S.C. § 201(c)].
- Copyright in the separate contribution vests initially in the author of the contribution.
- Copyright in the collective work vests in the collective author and extends only to the creative material contributed by that author, not to the preexisting material employed in the work" 17 U.S.C.§ 103(b).
See e.g., Jarvis v. K2 Inc. 486 F.3d 526 (9th Cir. 2007)
[Last updated in August of 2022 by the Wex Definitions Team]
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