>But, that €20k did not cover the copyrights to the work. Just the creating of it.
Honestly think that’s very debatable he was contracted by the company he can’t just rugpull because decides there is an extra different secret ownership he never handed over and has never mentioned during the transaction and never brought up till years later when he got bitter. Don’t think his claims would stand up at all of lawyers were involved.
He needs to take the W, he’ll never have his work in anything as large as MC, he got paid 20k for something no one else would pay for honestly things could be worse, his poem could be removed.
I mean it’s now time to ask if he actually even has the rights to license the poem at all.
> Don’t think his claims would stand up at all of lawyers were involved.
Absolutely 100% would stand up. If the US and UK have one thing it's strong copyright protections that favor the copyright holder. You can't accidentally transfer owner of your copyright with an off-handed remark and this is well established. If I commission an artist for a work the artist retains the copyright unless it's explicitly transferred to me or if the artists is my employee -- contractor isn't enough.
> his poem could be removed
That wouldn't stop it in general. It comes down to the specific license terms. Copyright deals with performances and his work has already been performed millions of times. That can't be undone. Pirating a movie, watching it, and then deleting your copy doesn't make it not copyright infringement. If the contract said only for use in Minecraft then any merchandise or Minecraft: Bedrock. Worse, licenses aren't by default transferable. If I give your band a license to play a song I wrote and you leave to join another band it doesn't follow you unless it was explicitly stated in the contract. So if Microsoft did something with the licensed work that wasn't under its legal subsidiary Mojang that might also be a problem.
I'm not saying any of this happened but hopefully it's enough to demonstrate that "obviously a judge would rule that a reasonable person would have assumed the work came with copyright assignment" is very unlikely doubly because the fact that they asked him for assignment later means they knew.
You own the copyright to any works you create unless you have signed a document that specifically says you don't. It's not his responsibility to bring up the basic fundamentals of copyright law during a transaction, and there's nothing different and secret about them. If the messages constituted an implied contract, the only thing implied would be a license to use it in Minecraft, not a total transfer of all ownership. You may want to become familiar with said basics of copyright; Creative Commons has a good explainer https://certificates.creativecommons.org/cccertedu/chapter/2...
Honestly think that’s very debatable he was contracted by the company he can’t just rugpull because decides there is an extra different secret ownership he never handed over and has never mentioned during the transaction and never brought up till years later when he got bitter. Don’t think his claims would stand up at all of lawyers were involved.
He needs to take the W, he’ll never have his work in anything as large as MC, he got paid 20k for something no one else would pay for honestly things could be worse, his poem could be removed.
I mean it’s now time to ask if he actually even has the rights to license the poem at all.