Publisher-Author Contracts and Agreements : Principles, Roles and Expectations

The past 20 years or so have witnessed an increase in writings and publications from African settings. This is good news especially based on the belief that Africans have historically never been perceived as passionate about writing – let alone reading any material. However, what is still less exciting is the fact that there is still a wide gap between the writers' club and the general appreciation of copyright. In this sense, there is a disparity between the appreciation of copyright between authors and publishers. This paper thus makes a fair attempt at addressing that gap. It gives a biased perspective towards Ugandan copyright law in pointing out the key principles that address publisher-author contractual relationships. The paper goes on to explain the different circumstances under which a license situation can be handled in such a relationship. Under various licensing models, the paper gives the author's perspective on delicate matters such as ‘publisher's privilege', as well as situations involving new uses and old language situations for published works. The new licensing regime of the open source movement which generally by-passes publishers, is also addressed as well as the fair use principle. The emphasis given as a take-home out of this paper is an understanding of the nature of rights granted by one party to another in author-publisher contracts, as well as the geographical scope of the rights granted