While reading through an album booklet I came across a scenario where the artist, Lana Del Rey had a copyright under exclusive license to sed record company. From an ownership perspective how does this work?
Bonus: Is there a difference between the terms under the exclusive license of and under the exclusive license to? I've seen this on a few occasions and was just wondering if this was a matter of phrasing.
Intellectual property such as copyrighted material carries with it the requirement that the owner give permission to use the thing in a particular way. A "license" is simply permission (the concept is applicable to other thing like driving and conducting business). In the context of copyright, it refers to a document stating the conditions on the two parties: the party with the right grants permission to the person wanting to use the thing, as long as they do certain things. If A (the rights-holder) grants an exclusive license to B, then only B can do those things, otherwise, A might also grant a license to C to do the same things. The distinction between "license of" and "license to" tends to refer to identifying the party granting a license ("license of") and the party being granted a license ("license to"), but you shouldn't plan on taking that to the bank.
In this case, Lana Del Rey is the copyright holder. She has given the permission to distribute the work in the USA to Interscope Records. This is an exclusive license, so unless Lana Del Rey somehow manages to revoke that license, she cannot give a license to anyone else in the USA.
Interscope Records has an exclusive license from Lana Del Rey. It's like saying "I give a present to you" vs. "You receive a present from me". So Interscope Records doesn't own the copyright, but they have a license to distribute the work in the USA.
