Film Sound and Copyright

- This article is based on copyright legislation in Germany -
The authors of works in literature, science, and art enjoy the protection of copyright law for their creations. According to the law, works must be personal intellectual creations. A work, in the sense of copyright law, must meet the following criteria: "creation," "intellectual content," "perceptible form design," and "individuality."
These criteria were also the basis for several important court decisions for film sound creators, such as the "Mixing Engineer" ruling by the Federal Court of Justice from 2002 (BGH I ZR 1/00), the underlying decision from the Cologne Higher Regional Court (6 U 7/98), and the so-called "Sound Engineer" ("Tonmeister") ruling from the Federal Court of Justice in 1982 (BGH I ZR 114/80).
It is crucial that a perceptible creative activity is not carried out solely using technical means and that a certain level of "design quality" is achieved.

The overall film sound (excluding music) creates an independent soundscape that is essential to the film's events, composed of a combination of tones, particularly sounds and noises, thus establishing an independent layer of the film.
So what follows when applying the criteria developed by jurisprudence and literature ("creation," "intellectual content," "perceptible form design," and "individuality") to define the copyright work concept in relation to film sound?
Film sound creators produce an (artificial) sound image through the recording, selection, design, generation, and composition of various existing and newly created sounds, which can evoke and direct various moods and a dramatic understanding of the plot in the audience. Due to the diverse design possibilities and creative freedoms in creating the sound image, the threshold of individuality/design quality is surpassed.

In such a definition, the commonly used definition for music can be considered: "Works of music are all personal intellectual creations that use tones as a means of expression" (Schricker/Loewenheim, Copyright Commentary).
The definition of film sound is: "Works of film sound are all personal intellectual creations that use sounds (tones, noises) as a means of expression to create authentic or artificial sound images for moving images." The film sound creators are considered co-authors of the film work as they contribute a creative effort during the production of the film work, which is a central part of the film.