Legal Journal

Players of Advertising Industry and Copyright Law

One can easily say that “Advertising Industry nowadays sits at the heart of Copyright Law”. The purpose of the creative activity is not the advertising material, but to create a work of art. It means appearance of a man’s creative work in various fields. That’s why we see a poem, a novel or a plastic art firstly as a work of art before anything else. However in today’s world, value of a work depends on its demandable potential. Therefore market value comes before artistic value. Even the most beautiful work of art is not worth any value if it’s not demanded by the market. Therefore the advertisement shows up at this demanding point. The market is built upon the concept of sale of products and making them commodities, under which the advertisement works as a demand increasing tool.  Even artistic works require marketing and advertising activities and the advertising industry use artistic works for increasing demand of other goods. The relation between creative activity and advertising industry is emerges around this. During advertising of a good, line from a poem, scenes from movies, photographic works or musical works are used. Even other artistic works are not used or cited, the advertisement itself may be protected as an artistic work when it meets certain criteria.

Therefore an important part of the advertising industry players consist of authors owning the copyright. The author may be a writer, a poet, a photography artist or a musician.

The second group of advertising industry players may change depending on the type of advertisement. If it is a TV commercial, dubbing artist, script writer, director or musician may join as a player or if it is a printed advertisement, graphics designer or photography artist may constitute the second part of advertising industry players.

The last group of players are the creative agency and clients. Advertising/creative agencies mostly act as an intermediary between the creative authors and clients. The agency forms the creative team, pays relevant expenses and copyright fees and then transfers the required licenses to client for use in relevant advertising channels. Thus, the agency has a role of managing the financial part of the project as well as managing copyright licenses and payments.

Knowing the players of advertising world and their definitions in terms of Copyright Law determines the quality and success of the agreements which will be signed with these players. While the first and second group of above-mentioned players constitute the creative part of the project, the third group of players such as clients and agencies organize the creative process by gathering the players together and organizing relevant payments and licenses.

Law on Intellectual and Artistic Works (“Law”) define the works originating from a creative process as “Work” and their creators as “Author”. In addition, dubbing artists or TV commercial actors may be deemed and protected as “Performer” under the Law. Although it is not expressly regulated under the Law, advertising/creative agencies may also benefit from the Law at some cases.

It should also be noted that as a consequence of the growing copyright knowledge and awareness, the collecting societies and professional associations have started to get involved in these process and therefore the collecting societies and professional associations which announce price lists and tariffs should be seen as players of advertising industry.

Av. Sinem Birsin