Copyright registration (Indautor)

The right exists already. The proof is what you are missing

Literary and artistic works are protected whether or not they are registered (article 162 of the Mexican Federal Copyright Law). You do not register to obtain the right. You register because the Public Registry gives legal certainty and publicity, which is what you need years later when someone disagrees about who made what, and when.

Two people claiming the same design, the same manual, the same song: the one holding a registration with a date is in a very different position from the one holding a folder of drafts.

What can be registered before Indautor

• Literary works: books, manuals, courses, scripts, editorial content.
• Artistic and graphic works: illustration, photography, design.
• Musical works, with or without lyrics, and sound recordings.
• Audiovisual works.
• Computer programs and their documentation.
• Compilations and databases, where the selection or arrangement is original.

Who owns it: the rules that surprise people

Moral rights belong to the author, and they are inalienable, imprescriptible, unwaivable and not subject to seizure (article 19). No contract changes that.

Economic rights are different, and the defaults are not what most people assume:

• Commissioned work. Unless agreed otherwise, the person or company that commissions the production of a work holds the economic rights in it (article 83). The paid participant keeps the right to be credited for the part they created.
• Work by employees. Where there is a written individual employment contract and nothing else is agreed, the economic rights are presumed to be split equally between employer and employee. With no written contract, they belong to the employee (article 84).
• Every transfer must be in writing, or it is null by operation of law, and every transfer is onerous and temporary (article 30). Where no term is stated, the transfer is taken to last five years (article 33).

That last rule is the one that catches established companies: an assignment signed years ago with no term may have expired without anyone noticing.

What we do

We register the work, and separately we check the chain of ownership behind it: who created it, under what arrangement, whether it was a commission or an employment, and whether the agreement says what the company believes it says.