We had a little hiccup today and I had a feeling it would come - last week, when watching Nick's Nudie documentary, I noticed for the first time that Image Entertainment but a stupid copyright notice on it. Now, they do not own the copyright nor have they ever submitted for copyright - they offered me an advance against royalties and instead of taking it I told them we'd use it to pay for the documentary. Therefore, they did not fund the documentary, I did, and therefore I own it. They had the rights to it for seven years, just as they had the rights to the film on DVD and VHS for seven years (their contract expired in 2009 and that is why the disc is OOP everywhere). The authoring guy and I discussed removing it, but it was complicated due to some music that would have been cut off along with two shots that follow it. So, after discussion and my explaining it all to him, we left it. Of course the replication place saw it and immediately asked me to get documentation - of course, there is no documentation - it wasn't even part of the original contract, and the original contract is buried deep in some box and I wouldn't even know where to begin looking. So, I called my guy at the authoring place and he said to just write him a note of ownership and indemnification, a simple half-page, which I did. He thinks it will all be fine now.
