A team spent years on a Coyote film. It cost millions, it was finished and ready for cinemas. The studio decided not to release it.
The natural reaction is to ask how destroying something like that can be legal. The answer is uncomfortable but clear: because the economic rights belonged to the studio, not to the people who made it.
What it means to own a work
A film is a work protected by copyright. Whoever holds the economic rights decides how it is exploited: whether it is reproduced, distributed, communicated to the public, translated, adapted — or whether nothing is done with it at all.
That power includes the decision never to release it. This is not a loophole: it is precisely the content of the right.
Moral and economic rights are not the same
A distinction that matters a great deal in Mexico.
- Economic rights are the commercial ones. They can be assigned, licensed, inherited, sold. They normally end up with whoever financed the work.
- Moral rights always belong to the individual author. They are inalienable, cannot be waived and do not expire. They include recognition of authorship and the right to object to distortions of the work that harm the author’s reputation.
That is why a studio can keep a film in a drawer while still crediting who directed and wrote it.
The same logic, on a smaller scale
This is not a Hollywood-only problem. It is the conversation I have every week with Mexican businesses.
- The logo a freelancer designed: with no signed assignment, the economic rights are still theirs, even though the invoice is paid.
- The software a third party built: with no work-for-hire agreement, the code does not belong to the company.
- Product photography, website copy, the corporate video: the same.
Paying for creative work does not automatically transfer the rights to it. A document has to say so.
What to check today
- That an assignment of economic rights in writing exists with every external creator.
- That employment contracts address ownership of what is created in the course of the job.
- That the assignment specifies scope, territory and duration, not a generic formula.
- That, where appropriate, the work is registered with INDAUTOR as evidence.
The Coyote story gets told as a creative injustice. Looked at closely, it is a lesson about who signs what before the work begins.
If you do not know whose name your business’s creative assets sit in, write to us: we will review it at no cost.