You and your fellow students have written an extensive paper for an English class, each writing a separate and largely independent section, like a chapter, providing your analysis of preexisting works including poetry, movies, and works of performing art.

 What do you need to know to determine whether you have created a work to which copyright applies? 

 

Assuming you have identified that the work you have authored, or parts of it, are subject to copyright protection, describe the layers of copyright ownership, and if there is a name for this type of work, provide it. Explain your reasoning.

  It turns out that you have written quite the original work and a publishing company is interested in publishing your work. In negotiating with you as an author for the exclusive rights to publish your work, they present you with an assignment of IP and waiver of moral rights agreements. Some of your fellow student authors want to know what the waiver of moral rights means. 

Please write what you would say to explain it to them, and what the publishing company could do or not do, if they succeed in getting a waiver of moral rights, in addition to the IP assignment. 

 

One of the other student's sections discussed an old and well known poem. In referencing it for literary critique, the student reproduced a full paragraph of the poem. Knowing that you have just taken an IP course, the student asks you whether you think they are infringing copyright.

  Explain what you would tell them and any other information you would need to decide.