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You are here: Experts > Industry > Broadcasting > TV Industry > Animated Pilot + Bible ready, legal issues to concider before showing anyone?
Expert: Marrissa O`Leary
Date: 9/3/2008
Subject: Animated Pilot + Bible ready, legal issues to concider before showing anyone?
Question
Hello there, We have produced an animation Bible and a pilot for a kids animated series. We've recently had interest from a Distributor who wants us to send our episode scripts, bible etc... but we're concerned we know too little about our legal standing to just give him all our work.
We have registered the name as a trademark, we have the domain name. Is there anything more we should do to protect ourselves before we go any further? We have no contracts written up between the creators, no lawyer on board etc...
Thanks in advance.
Answer
Hi, Mike.
Congratulations on your success thus far.
Please allow me to preface this by saying that I am not an attorney, and you can't take anything here as legal advice.
You definitely need an attorney to help you decide what kind of entity will own and control your project - it may be that you should create your own company between all of you. You should be able to find an attorney in either LA or NY to handle this, because they are the ones who deal with these kind of issues most often. Look at the State Bar Associations and see if you see Intellectual Property and Entertainment Transactions listed. Also ---- look at the industry "trades" (Hollywood Reporter, Variety, and all the Animation sites) for the names of lawyers who have worked on projects such as yours.
Do you have artwork to go with your bible? If so, you may want to register it separately. If any of your material was created by anyone other than yourself, you will want to make sure you have a contract with that individual stating that their services were provided as a "work made for hire" (be sure to use that exact phrase), and that you retain all rights and ownership.
You should probably as register your material with the Writers Guild (www.wga.org) before sending it out to anyone.
No matter what, you will definitely need some sort of agreement between the creators -- who will get credit for what (and, if shared, in which order), who will do what should the series be sold, how to split the revenues, etc.
I hope this helps you on the right track. Please write me back if you need anything else.
Good luck and all the best!
Marrissa
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