Introduction to Intellectual Property

All right, ladies and gentlemen, we are here for another fantastic episode with Wes Carter of Winners and King and churchlaw.tv.

How are you doing today, sir?

I’m doing wonderful. How are you doing? Great. It’s always good to have you.

I feel like I leave with, you know, some type of certification or many education, you know, about law. So what are you going to be teaching us about today? Today, we’re going to talk a little bit. The fancy term is intellectual property, but really anything that you create, whether it’s an employee of the church or ministry, or if it’s the minister or the pastor themselves, but the creative things that you make while you’re working for the ministry or the church. So for instance, let’s talk about probably the most common thing in churches is pastors write sermons. And a lot of times the question comes up, does the pastor write sermons?

own the rights to those sermons, or does the church own the rights to those sermons? You know, sometimes a pastor’s going to want to collect those in some sort of compilation and maybe make a book out of those or a devotional or something along those lines, and then we run into these questions. A lot of times your music minister’s cutting tracks and recording new songs and coming up with new things, and you know, when it gets time to put those on a worship album, then everybody’s scratching their head wondering, What do we, you know, who owns the copyright? Who owns the song? Same way with videos and all kinds of creative work.

So, you know, I think what we’re going to talk about today is kind of general rules and some overarching. suggestions about how we can address those things. Nice! So see, once again, this is why you guys are the go -to if you’re needing, you know, a church lawyer. Maybe you’re needing, you know, attorneys for, you know, your pastors.

If you’re looking to start a church, grow a church, you’re developing a church, you’re in the middle, you’re at the end.

wherever, these are the guys who can help you. I never thought about the fact of like who owns the sermon, you know? Right. Yeah, so… How do you walk someone through that? I know every case is different and probably there are a lot of options.

I’ve learned that from you.

It’s a matter of like, which way do you want to go? How do you walk people through navigating that? You know, if you’re their church lawyer, how do you advise them in this area? Well, the first thing is to know is the general rule is if you make it, you own it. So if I’m out there in the wild and all by myself and I make a song or a book or whatever it may be, I own the copyright to that. And the copyright just means, I have the exclusive right to exploit that, to sell it, to make it, to reproduce it.

But if I’m working for someone, there may be an exception to that rule. So if it’s part of my job to make that, the employer owns that. So the question often comes down to, was that something you did as a side project, a hobby? on your personal time, or was that within what we attorneys call the scope of your employment? Was that part of your job to make that?

And if it’s part of your job, then the employer’s paying you to do it, and the employer, in our case, church or ministry, would own those rights. But as you can guess, a lot of that comes into he said, she said, if nothing’s in writing, because we’re arguing, hey, that wasn’t my job. My job’s to lead worship on Sunday morning, not to make a worship album.

Right. I have a question about that. How does it go when people get into the he said, she said, if they don’t have a church lawyer or if they haven’t consulted with attorneys for, you know, pastors, how does that, if you just in the he said, she said, have you seen that happen to people before? Do you know about that? Quite a few times. And probably the biggest downside is it causes strife in your church or ministry.

I mean, it gets awkward really fast. If people have different understandings, it gets a little animosity involved, which is never good on a church staff. So The big thing is that, you know, I would suggest is think about these things from the very beginning, and we can put something in writing, whether that’s a job duties description.

Sometimes with executives, we actually have an intellectual property agreement or a very simple employment agreement that may outline intellectual property.

And again, when I say intellectual property, I’m just talking about who owns the stuff. So, you know, for instance, an employment grant with a pastor may say, your job is to lead the flock, preach on Sunday, all these things, you know, go visit people in the hospital. Yes. Any creation of books, sermons, videos are deemed outside the scope of your employment, and you will own those. I see.

But then the second question we get into is, well, what if the church wants to use it or sell it? And so, you know, so a lot of times what will happen is if we give the ownership to the worship pastor, the senior pastor, one of those people, the church will turn around and get a royalty -free license to use it so that they both get a bang for their buck, so to speak. So the church can make copies and sell the pastor’s sermons in the church bookstore, or use it on a podcast, or whatever they want to do with it, but it’s through a license.

The pastor owns the underlying writes to that stuff, and later on he can have it to write a book or worship pastor owns the song even though the church is singing it and not paying anything to sing it or put it on church recordings, the worship pastor can

use it if he decides he’s gonna do a worship album five years from now.

Nice.

See I love this is why I love learning from you because you know all Who knew just if you are willing to step out and, you know, reach out to a church lawyer or talk to attorneys for pastors, this can help you avoid strife.

It can help, you know, because to me, like that’s stress that’s unnecessary, you know? Very stressful. Yes. And people don’t think about the peace of mind, I guess, that you can have by discussing these things, I guess, beforehand. Correct.

So tell me more about copyright. I have a question about that because I’ve heard, you know, different people say things over the course of my life. like, you know, if you write a song, you can just, and I don’t think this is right, but I’m just gonna put it out here. They’ll say things like you can write the song and then mail it to yourself and then don’t open the letter, you know, or you just go to copyright dot whatever. Elaborate on what copyright looks like because you have the expertise here being a church lawyer and with your, you know, firm with attorneys for pastors. The mailing to yourself method is never a good idea.

There’s many flaws with that. I mean, the theory was then you can at least prove how old it is because it’s postmarked. But there’s much better ways to do that, especially the copyright . gov is the website for the Copyright Office. So with copyrights, they’re so simple to file, I mean, especially for artistic work. Sometimes, you know, video games and software, things get more complicated.

But for an artistic work, we fill out an application, we send in a copy, we can even submit them online. So I can send the MP3 of the song or send a PDF of the book. And the filing fees are low, the attorney’s fees are low.

It’s much better to use the actual copyright application with the government to make sure you’re protected.

And again, copyright just keeps someone else, you can’t protect the idea, but you can protect how you express that idea. Okay, so it protects the words on the paper with a song and protects, actually, you know, various parts of a song, the lyrics, the composition, you can protect the actual final recording itself. And all those have different rights.

So with music, it gets, you know, has a lot of layers.

Just explaining it can get complicated, but copywriting is fairly simple. And so that’s why it’s important, especially with things like music and, you know, books that have maybe different contributors, because then you’re talking about who owns the cover art for the jacket of the book, or, you know, if someone edited it, did a Do you have an agreement with them? Do they have any underlying rights?

With music, again, you get into lyrics. You get into the composition. You get into the recording itself.

And you may file a recording that’s got five different copyright owners because there’s two songwriters, a producer, someone who actually sang on it, three different musicians on it. I mean, it can get fairly complicated fairly quick. Wow.

So if I understand when you’re talking about like copyright, for example, if we’re talking about music or a book, you’re literally taking this project and kind of like, like splicing it percentage wise.

Is that kind of what you’re saying? Well, a lot of times if we plan ahead of time and you talk to him before, we can avoid a lot of that.

So I can say, Hey, when you bring your guy in to play bass guitar, have him sign this one piece of paper that says you own all the rights to the music, you know, that he’s there as a work for hire, you know, I’ll pay 20 bucks to cut this track for me.

Then when we get to filing the copyright, you own it all. I see. And it makes it much simpler.

But a lot of people don’t think ahead. Sure. So by the time we get to the end, there’s been all these people in the process. Nobody signed anything.

Nobody’s even thought to. discuss anything and that’s when it gets really complicated oh man so see if you’re listening here this is what we’re telling you you have to get in touch with Wes Carter and the associates that law firm over at you know, Winters and King because they are the experts that can help you navigate all of these areas regarding intellectual property. So what would you say if someone is looking for a church lawyer or they’re needing attorneys for pastors, what would you tell them to do if they’re listening right now? Because I hear you saying, hey, we can save you time, we can save you probably money, you know, keep you stress -free in some ways, save you heartache. What would you tell them to do if they’re listening right now? I think the easiest thing to do is you can go to our website, which is www .

churchlaw.tv, or our main firm website is www.wintersking.com.

Our number is on there. It’s 918 -494 -6868. Or we have contact us pages where you can shoot us an email on either one of those web pages. But as you mentioned, it’s just important. we can save you a lot of money and a lot of heartache if we get to things and talk about them early as opposed to being your last resort.

Nice. And maybe if someone’s listening and they think, wow, you know, I think I do need a church lawyer. Maybe I should talk with Wes Carter, someone over at Winners and King, you know, about attorneys for pastors, but maybe they’re feeling like a little intimidated, you know, or maybe they don’t know if they can even afford it.

Like, is it worth it? taking that step anyway, even if you’re intimidated and unsure? It is. I have clients that do $500 a year, that make hundreds of dollars a year, to clients that, you know, as we talked about before, that were blessed to some of the largest churches and ministries in the whole world. So I’ve seen across the entire spectrum, and no matter what your revenue looks like, or your experience, or how long you’ve been in ministry, how long you’ve been thinking about starting a church, we can provide a huge tangible benefit to you no matter where you are in that spectrum. Nice.

That is very good to know.

So if you’re listening, reach out to our friends, churchlaw.tv, Winters and King.

They are the specialists when it comes to attorneys for pastors. Wes Carter, thank you again. I feel like I got another great education this week. It’s my pleasure. Thank you for being here.

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