Swedish Laws & Customs

[Mattias Hallin]

DON:

    About why they stopped printing credits in (at least) the Swedish Donald
Duck after about five issues back in 1990, or whenever, I believe that Disney
put the pressure on Egmont without any reason at all. Oh, they may well have
BELIEVED they had a reason, but unless I'm misinformed about how our
legislation works when it comes to who owns f'rinstance a literary work, or a
comic, or sumpin' similar, it's really like this: an artist ALWAYS owns his
work until he sells it off, and UNLESS otherwise specified only sells the right
to a limited (usually one-time) publication of it; he can, however, always
negotiate away his rights, and sell outright the ownership of his work, or sell
it for unlimited use, etc. BUT this must always be specified in his contract,
or it is (usually) automatically assumed that what he has sold is the right to
use the stuff ONCE. AND also: no buyer (f'rinstance a publisher) can EVER
negotiate away the artists RIGHT to be identified as creator of his own work.
IF a contract has such a clause, that clause is simply illegal. BUT, alas, if
an artist were to press charges on an issue like this, he might win the case,
alright, but would he work for those people again...?

Anyhow, to sum it up: an artist can sell his MATERIAL rights to a piece work as
much as he wants to/is pressured to, but he cannot sell, nor can anyone buy,
his IMMATERIAL right as creator of the work. (I hope these are the correct
legal terms in English). In so many words: Hemmets Journal/Disney is obliged to
in Sweden to give credits if an artist so demands, but they are equally free to
buy copyrights and publishing rights etc. fom the artist to their hearts
contents...

If you, and e.g. David, who actually works for both Egmont, Disney and
Gladstone, know from your experiences that I'm completely of the mark, please
let me know, and I'll try to ferret out more exact information.

Mattias