The rights of cinema employees under Intellectual and Artistic Works Law

The main purpose of the Intellectual and Artistic Works Law is to protect the people who produce intellectual works through creative processes. In line with this purpose, the Law defines the person who produces such a work as an author and regulates that the rights pertaining to the work shall be enjoyed exclusively by the author. However, in the case that the work is produced within a dependent work relationship, the rights pertaining to the work shall only be exercised by the employer, by law. This deviation from the general rule of Intellectual and Artistic Works Law, finds itself a wide field of application as there has been a steady increase in the works produced in a dependent work relationship. In particular, the complex structures of cinematographic works mostly bring with them the necessity of creating these works by bringing together a large number of people. Since bringing people who contribute to the cinematographic work together requires a certain organization and economic power, in practice this job is usually undertaken by the producer. This requires to analyze and assess if a producer can be qualified as an employer and the author or the cast as a worker. The legal regulation about the nature of the relationship between the producer and the author or cast is not clear. Hence, our study analyzes and defines the legal nature of this relationship through general principles of labour law, judicial decisions and the doctrine. Assessment of the nature of the relationship is especially significant when it comes to deciding on who can use the rights pertaining to a cinematographic work, given that the rights of the work can be used by the employer only if the work has been produced in a dependent work relationship. In this direction, creation of a work within the scope of a dependent working relationship has been made the subject of investigation in terms of cinematographic works in this study. In this context, the study starts with defining and explaining the cinematographic works and the authorship on cinematographic works. Afterwards the study examines the conditions in which an employer can use the rights pertaining to a cinematographic work and the actual enjoyment of them by the employer. Finally, the study concludes by focusing on whether the employer has an obligation to remunerate to cinema employees in return of exercising the rights of the cinematographic work.