Live Performance Checklist: Underlying Rights and Grand Rights, Creative Team Agreements, Performer and Union Terms, Recording and Streaming Rights, and Venue and Insurance

By Casey Scott McKay · 2025-09-28

This checklist audits a production's rights position from the option to the archive, in the order the decisions arrive. Phase one splits the music question into small rights and grand rights, because a venue's blanket licence does not cover a musical and that is the most expensive assumption in the sector. Later phases paper the creative team before rehearsals, sign the devised-work authorship agreement in week one, work inside the union frameworks for performers and musicians, and take capture consent at engagement rather than at the moment of maximum leverage. The final phases cover the venue and ticket layer, title and sponsorship, the archive that becomes the company's asset, and the insurance position that depends on the clearance file. Gate items mark where a production should not proceed.

IP and Technology > Copyright | Checklist | Published 28 September 2025 - Updated 1 December 2025 | Casey Scott McKay - marksy.us

Summary. This checklist audits a production's rights position from option to archive, in the order the decisions arrive. Phase one splits music into small rights and grand rights, because a venue's blanket licence does not cover a musical. Later phases paper the creative team before rehearsals, sign the devised-work authorship agreement in week one, work inside the union frameworks, and take capture consent at engagement rather than at maximum leverage. Final phases cover venue and ticket terms, title and sponsorship, the archive that becomes the asset, and the insurance position that depends on the clearance file. Gate items mark where a production should stop.

Keywords: live performance clearance · grand rights · dramatic performance licence · director agreement · designer engagement · choreographer licence · devised work authorship · capture consent · cast recording · venue rider · ticket terms · title clearance · sponsor obligations · production archive · errors and omissions

How to use this checklist

| Phase | What it produces | When | Gate | |---|---|---|---| | 1. Underlying rights | A rights file and a music schedule | On announcement | Grand rights confirmed in writing | | 2. Creative team | Signed engagements | Before rehearsals | Nothing starts unpapered | | 3. Devised work | A one-page authorship agreement | Rehearsal week one | Signed before material is made | | 4. Performers | Engagement letters and releases | At engagement | Likeness releases taken | | 5. Capture | Consents from everyone | At engagement | Consent precedes the decision to record | | 6. Venue and ticket | A reviewed agreement and rider | Before contract | Recording position known | | 7. Title and sponsor | Clearance memorandum, obligations sheet | Before artwork | Title searched first | | 8. Archive | An indexed file with rights per item | Continuously | Custodian named | | 9. Insurance | Cover confirmed against the file | Before opening | Clearance file legible to an underwriter | | 10. Afterlife | A rights calendar and chain summary | Before closing | Revival and transfer positions decided |

The matter. A mid-scale company staging a licensed musical, developing a devised piece in a second space, touring a play to eleven venues, and fielding a broadcaster's enquiry about streaming a production that closed two years ago.

Phase 1. Clear the underlying rights and split the music

[ ] Take the dramatic performance licence and confirm performances, venue or territory, period, extensions, fees, and any restrictions on cuts, changes, casting, or interpolations.
[ ] Ask about exclusivity in the territory, since it is sometimes available, sometimes already granted elsewhere, and never volunteered.
[ ] Confirm the chain behind the script, since an adaptation depends on a derivative grant under 17 U.S.C. § 106 and a translation is another author's layer.
[ ] Check the termination position under 17 U.S.C. § 203 on older properties, since a revival may be negotiating with a different party than the last production did.
[ ] Separate small rights from grand rights. Non-dramatic public performance is blanket-licensed; dramatic use of music as part of a narrative performance is carved out and must be negotiated directly.
[ ] Do not rely on the venue's performance licence for a musical, which is the single most expensive assumption available in this field.
[ ] Get the boundary confirmed in writing where the show sits near it — a revue, a play with songs, a concert staging.
[ ] Schedule every piece of music with composer, publisher, clearance status, and whether a pre-existing recording is used, which requires master rights as well.
[ ] Identify underscore and sound design, which is either commissioned (Phase 2) or licensed.
[ ] Note that materials are rented, not sold, with return obligations and restrictions on marking them up.
[ ] Raise the capture question with the licensing house at the outset, even if the expected answer is no, since a house asked for the first time after a hit opens knows exactly what its leverage is.
[ ] [Gate] No musical goes into rehearsal without a written grand rights position.

Phase 2. Paper the creative team before rehearsals

[ ] Understand why this is urgent. A freelance contributor keeps their copyright absent a signed transfer satisfying 17 U.S.C. § 204, and theatrical work sits poorly within the enumerated work-made-for-hire categories in 17 U.S.C. § 101. Paying for the work does not buy it.
[ ] The director. Cover the run and extensions; remounts, including whether an associate may re-stage and on what fee; what happens if the director is unavailable; credit in the exact words; the prompt book's ownership and use; capture, separately from remount; and licensed productions elsewhere.
[ ] The designers. Choose assignment or licence deliberately. If licence, enumerate: this production, extensions, remounts, tours, licensee productions, marketing in all media, merchandise, inclusion in a capture, and inclusion in the archive.
[ ] Address the physical realisation separately, since scenery and costumes are property that will be stored, sold, or destroyed.
[ ] Say where the drawings live, since design files are the sector's most commonly lost asset.
[ ] Align the design licence with the photography uses, since production photographs reproduce the designs and two documents that disagree produce a dispute.
[ ] The choreographer. Choreographic works are protectable under 17 U.S.C. § 102; address licence scope, who may re-stage and teach, ownership of rehearsal or archival video, whether that video is the fixation, and attribution.
[ ] The composer and sound designer. Commissioned music is a work with an author; address the cast recording, any capture, and separate exploitation.
[ ] The writer, on new work. Options, commissioning terms, subsidiary rights participations, and first refusals are the company's long-term assets.
[ ] Everyone else who makes something fixed — poster illustrator, photographer, videographer, web designer.
[ ] [Gate] No creative contributor begins work unpapered.

Phase 3. Sign the devised-work agreement in week one

[ ] Understand the default. A devised process produces joint authorship under 17 U.S.C. § 201 absent written agreement: undivided interests, non-exclusive licensing by any author, and accounting obligations among them.
[ ] Have the conversation in the first rehearsal week, when nobody yet believes the show will succeed, because it is unhavable later.
[ ] Keep it to one page, since a two-page document signed in week one is worth more than a twelve-page one signed never.
[ ] Name the participants and state the vesting model — company ownership with a royalty pool, or joint ownership with a designated administering party.
[ ] Name an administering party who may license without collecting signatures.
[ ] State the pool and the split, including for contributors who leave, since that is the scenario that produces the dispute.
[ ] State what happens on a transfer, since a commercial producer's diligence begins here.
[ ] State that pre-existing material brought into the room is licensed, not contributed.
[ ] Address material cut from the show, which is often substantial and occasionally reappears elsewhere.
[ ] State the credit.
[ ] Expect the objection that the document implies distrust, and answer that its absence is what produces the dispute and that the people harmed are the contributors.
[ ] [Gate] No devised material is created before the agreement is signed.

Phase 4. Engage performers and musicians

[ ] Read the union recording provisions before planning a capture, not after.
[ ] Distinguish archival, promotional, and commercial recording, since consent to one is not consent to another and the payment structures differ.
[ ] Take likeness releases at engagement, covering marketing, merchandise, programmes, and thumbnails, since publicity rights are state law and cost nothing to clear at engagement.
[ ] Apply Phase 3 to performers who devise, compose, or write.
[ ] Cover understudies and replacements on the same terms, since a run of any length will have both.
[ ] Set a social media position consistent with venue and union terms, covering what may be filmed backstage and onstage.
[ ] Handle musicians separately, since their agreements and recording provisions are distinct and are in practice the most common binding constraint on a capture.
[ ] Note the limits of federal protection, since a live performance is not a fixed work and 17 U.S.C. § 1101 reaches unauthorised fixation of live musical performance rather than performance generally, with criminal analogues at 18 U.S.C. § 2319A.
[ ] [Gate] Nobody performs without a likeness release on file.

Phase 5. Take capture consent at engagement

[ ] Take it from everyone — director, designers, choreographer, composer, performers, musicians — whether or not a capture is planned.
[ ] Separate consent to fixation from the commercial terms, since the veto that matters is over recording at all and separating it from the money conversation is what makes it obtainable.
[ ] Extend the script licence to audiovisual reproduction, distribution, and transmission, which the live licence will not cover.
[ ] Extend the music licence to reproduction and synchronisation, add mechanicals for an audio release, and add master rights where pre-existing recordings are used.
[ ] Clear what is visible and audible: set artwork, third-party designs, brands and logos, and any music playing in a scene.
[ ] Check the venue agreement, which may prohibit recording, claim rights in it, or charge for it.
[ ] Decide who owns the resulting audiovisual work, which has its own copyright and its own authorship question.
[ ] Register it under 17 U.S.C. § 408, noting that registration precedes suit under 17 U.S.C. § 411 as confirmed in Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com, and that timely registration conditions statutory damages and fees under 17 U.S.C. § 412.
[ ] Note that the capture fixes the staging, which is the one route by which the direction becomes a fixed work — a reason to address it in the director's agreement.
[ ] Plan the distribution, since transmission to the public engages the analysis in American Broadcasting Cos. v. Aereo and online distribution brings 17 U.S.C. § 512 into play both offensively and defensively.
[ ] Do not treat an archival recording as an asset, since archival consent is not commercial consent and the recording that exists is often the one that may not be shown.
[ ] [Gate] No capture is distributed until every layer has been re-cleared for the new use.

Phase 6. Read the venue and ticket layer

[ ] Allocate the performance licences, and confirm what the venue's licence actually covers.
[ ] Address recording by the production, by the venue, and by the audience.
[ ] Address photography: who takes it, who owns it, who may use it, for how long, and in what media.
[ ] Note that the photographer owns the images absent a signed transfer, and that those images reproduce protected designs, protected costumes, and identifiable people.
[ ] Address marks and signage, including the venue's use of production imagery in its own marketing after the run.
[ ] Address the get-out, since abandoned scenery and costumes are property with an owner and a disposal cost.
[ ] Read the ticket terms as a contract with the attendee, covering recording, admission, resale, and the licence over the attendee's image captured in the building.
[ ] Harmonise a tour with a rider, since twenty venue agreements signed unreviewed produce twenty different answers.
[ ] Confirm who is contracting, since a co-production, a festival presentation, and a venue hire involve different entities and a claim will name all of them.
[ ] [Gate] No venue contract is signed before the recording and photography positions are known.

Phase 7. Clear the title and manage the sponsors

[ ] Search the title before the artwork is commissioned, since clearance costs a half-day beforehand and a season afterwards.
[ ] Understand the registration position, since titles of single works face a difficult path under 15 U.S.C. § 1052 and the practical protection is unregistered rights plus the logo and artwork.
[ ] File what is registrable: company name, logo, and merchandise classes, and a series title where one exists.
[ ] Watch the expressive-use boundary after Jack Daniel's Properties v. VIP Products, which narrowed the space for a title-based defence where a mark is used as a source indicator.
[ ] Read the sponsorship agreement as a trademark licence, with quality control, approvals, and exclusivity that constrain what other brands may appear — including brands appearing on stage as part of a design.
[ ] Reconcile sponsor exclusivity against the set design early, since a change in previews is cheap and a change after opening is not.
[ ] Plan for ambush with clean-zone provisions, ticket terms, and venue control, which do work that 15 U.S.C. § 1125 alone will not.
[ ] Summarise sponsor obligations on one page for the marketing team, who perform them without thinking of it as trademark compliance.
[ ] [Gate] No artwork is commissioned before the title is searched.

Phase 8. Build the archive as an asset

[ ] Keep the prompt book, and know who owns it.
[ ] Keep the designs as produced, with the licence terms attached.
[ ] Keep the production photography, with the photographer's terms and the permitted uses recorded.
[ ] Keep the recordings with their consent basis recorded, since in ten years nobody will remember which permission any file was made under and the default assumption will be the wrong one.
[ ] Keep the programmes and marketing, which are frequently the only surviving evidence of credit arrangements.
[ ] Keep the contracts, indexed by production, since a revival negotiation begins with what the original agreements said.
[ ] Register in batches — captures, photography, poster artwork, designs — because 17 U.S.C. § 412 conditions the remedies that make enforcement rational, and 17 U.S.C. § 504 supplies the framework.
[ ] Treat the mailing list as a protected asset with access controls sufficient to support a trade secret characterisation under 18 U.S.C. § 1839.
[ ] Name a custodian, especially on co-productions, since the alternative is discovering in five years that neither party kept the drawings.
[ ] [Gate] The archive is not a box in someone's garage.

Phase 9. Confirm the insurance position

[ ] Confirm errors and omissions cover, and expect the insurer to ask for the clearance file before binding, which makes a clean rights file a condition of cover rather than merely a defence.
[ ] Check whether a rights failure is a covered cause under cancellation and abandonment cover or an exclusion, since it is frequently an exclusion.
[ ] Check public liability and participant cover for immersive and participatory formats, where audiences move through the space and handle objects.
[ ] Check property cover for scenery, costumes, instruments, and equipment, which are valuable, mobile, and frequently in a truck.
[ ] Confirm the venue and the production are not each assuming the other holds cover, a common gap on tours and routine at festivals.
[ ] Confirm cover extends to a capture, since an audiovisual work distributed online has a different claims profile from a performance seen by four hundred people.
[ ] Diary policy dates against the rights calendar, since an extension running past the policy is as much a problem as one running past the licence.
[ ] Name every entity as insured on co-productions and festival presentations.
[ ] Tell the producer what is uninsurable: a chain-of-title failure on a devised piece, an unpapered staging claim on a remount, and a capture made without full consent.
[ ] [Gate] The clearance file is legible to an underwriter, not held in the general manager's memory.

Phase 10. Plan the afterlife

[ ] Decide the revival position now: which agreements permit a remount, on what payment, with whose involvement.
[ ] Decide the transfer position now, since diligence will ask for the chain of title on script, direction, designs, choreography, and devised material, and will price the gaps.
[ ] Decide the licensing position now, since licensing a production to other companies requires design and staging licences that permit it.
[ ] Diary option and licence expiries, since a production running longer than its licence is performing without one.
[ ] Diary termination windows under 17 U.S.C. § 203 on long-lived properties.
[ ] Keep a one-page chain-of-title summary per production, maintained rather than reconstructed.
[ ] If you inherit a mess, do not attempt a full retrospective clean-up. Build summaries for the three or four productions that might be revived, transferred, licensed, or recorded, apply the discipline forward, and let the historic tail age out.
[ ] [Gate] No production closes without its rights position recorded.

Format-specific additions

[ ] Immersive and site-specific work. The environment may be closer to an architectural or sculptural work than to a set. Audience participation raises release questions belonging in the ticketing flow rather than at the door. Installed art elements may engage the moral rights provisions at 17 U.S.C. § 106A on removal or alteration.
[ ] Concert and gig formats. Small rights territory for the music, with merchandise, likeness, and recording questions persisting.
[ ] Festival and multi-venue formats. Each performance separately licensed, the venue layer multiplied, and the festival's own marks and sponsor obligations sitting over the top.
[ ] Streamed-only performances. These are audiovisual works from the outset, not live performances with a recording added, and the clearance stack should be built that way.
[ ] Educational and amateur productions. The exemption at 17 U.S.C. § 110 is narrower than the sector believes, does not cover a ticketed school production, and certainly does not cover a recording posted for absent parents. Licensing house terms for this sector are cheap and the houses would far rather issue a small licence.
[ ] Parody and adaptation stagings. 17 U.S.C. § 107, read through Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music and Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith, governs, and the purpose comparison is now the controlling question.
[ ] Costume and constructed scenery questions run through Star Athletica, L.L.C. v. Varsity Brands, Inc. and Mazer v. Stein on separability.
[ ] International touring. Re-ask the four questions rather than assuming the answers travel with the set: who owns the staging, who owns the performances, what does the music licence cover, and what may be recorded. Performers' neighbouring rights, broader moral rights, differently drawn grand rights boundaries, and protection for unfixed works all vary.

Where productions go wrong

[ ] The venue licence was assumed to cover the music, and the discovery came from the rights holder.
[ ] The designer's drawings were assumed to belong to the company, and the discovery came when the production toured.
[ ] The director's agreement is silent on remounts, converting a routine revival into a negotiation from no position.
[ ] The devised piece has no paperwork, which is the most common reason a successful small-company show fails to transfer.
[ ] Capture consent was taken late, handing every contributor a veto at maximum leverage.
[ ] The archival recording is treated as a commercial asset, which it is not.
[ ] Photography ownership was never addressed, and the photographer owns three years of marketing images.
[ ] The title was never searched, and the letter arrived in week two after the artwork was printed.
[ ] Sponsor exclusivity conflicts with the set design, discovered after opening.
[ ] Nobody owns the rights file, which is the structural failure underneath all of the above.

The order that works

[ ] 1. Dramatic performance licence and the chain behind it.
[ ] 2. Music split into small and grand rights, grand rights confirmed in writing.
[ ] 3. Director, designers, choreographer, and composer papered before rehearsals.
[ ] 4. Devised-work agreement signed in rehearsal week one.
[ ] 5. Performers and musicians engaged inside the union framework, with likeness releases.
[ ] 6. Capture consent from everyone at engagement.
[ ] 7. Venue agreement and ticket terms reviewed; rider drafted for tours.
[ ] 8. Title searched before artwork; sponsor obligations summarised for marketing.
[ ] 9. Archive built as you go, with a rights position per item.
[ ] 10. Captures, photography, and artwork registered in batches.
[ ] 11. Insurance confirmed against the clearance file.
[ ] 12. Rights calendar and chain-of-title summary maintained.

Four of the twelve happen before the first rehearsal and are worth more than the other eight combined.

The four documents, clause by clause

Most of this checklist reduces to four documents. Generic templates in this sector are unusually poor, so it is worth being specific.

The director's agreement

[ ] The run, and every extension mechanism, stated as dates and performance counts rather than as a season.
[ ] Remounts: whether the direction may be reproduced, on what fee, and whether the director or a nominated associate must be offered the work first.
[ ] Unavailability, which is the situation that actually arises and which most agreements omit.
[ ] Credit in the exact words that will appear, since disputes here are more often about billing than money.
[ ] The prompt book: who owns it, who holds it, who may use it, and for what.
[ ] Capture, stated separately from remount, since a company permitted to re-stage is not thereby permitted to record.
[ ] Licensed productions elsewhere, a growing practice and an unpapered one.

The designer's engagement

[ ] Assignment or licence, stated expressly, with licence the usual and usually correct answer.
[ ] Permitted uses enumerated, not described generally: this production, extensions, remounts, tours, licensee productions, marketing in all media, merchandise, capture, and archive.
[ ] The physical realisation, which is property and will be stored, sold, or destroyed.
[ ] The location and custody of drawings, models, and plots.
[ ] The photography interaction, since production photographs reproduce the designs and the two documents must agree.
[ ] Credit and approval rights over how the design is reproduced in marketing.

The devised-work agreement

[ ] One page. Week one. Signed by everyone in the room.
[ ] Participants named; vesting model stated.
[ ] Pool, split, and the departure scenario.
[ ] Administering party named, able to license without collecting signatures.
[ ] Transfer position stated.
[ ] Pre-existing material licensed, not contributed.
[ ] Credit stated.
[ ] Resist the urge to draft it properly, because a two-page document signed in week one beats a twelve-page one signed never.

The capture consent

[ ] Taken in the engagement letter, not separately.
[ ] Archival, promotional, and commercial use distinguished.
[ ] Consent to fixation given now; commercial terms deferred, which is the whole trick, because the veto that matters is the veto over recording at all.

Three productions run against this checklist

A regional theatre staging a licensed musical. Phase 1 takes the dramatic performance licence and confirms grand rights in writing rather than inferring them from the venue's blanket licence; a music schedule is built with a clearance status per title, and two pre-existing recordings are identified as needing master rights. Phase 2 amends eleven engagement letters before signature, converting bare commissions into licences covering the run, extension, marketing, and any capture, with the drawings staying with the designers. Phase 5 takes capture consent from the whole company although no capture is planned. Two years later a broadcaster asks about a stream, and the only outstanding work is extending the script and music licences — because everything else was consented at the front. The foresight cost one paragraph in eleven letters.

A devised piece by a small company. Phase 3 produces a one-page agreement signed in the first rehearsal week, vesting the work in the company with a defined royalty pool for eight contributors and a designated administering party. Two contributors leave during the run, one on poor terms. The show transfers eighteen months later; diligence takes a week rather than failing, and the departed contributors receive their pool share, which is why they do not object. The document cost an hour to draft and produced the only successful transfer in the company's history.

A commercial play with a starry cast and a sponsor. Phase 7 searches the title before artwork and identifies a prior user in an adjacent market; a co-existence position is agreed rather than discovered in week two. The sponsor obligations summary reveals an exclusivity commitment conflicting with a brand appearing on the set, resolved by a design change costing very little in previews and a great deal after opening. Phase 4 likeness releases taken at engagement matter considerably when a cast member becomes much more famous during the run and the merchandising conversation begins.

A tour of eleven venues. Phase 6 produces a single rider addressing recording, photography, marks, and imagery reuse, applied to all eleven contracts. Three venues object; two accept the rider with amendments; one is dropped in favour of an alternative. The cost is a fortnight of negotiation in pre-production. The alternative — eleven different answers to the same four questions, discovered when the production photography turns up in a venue's brochure for a different show — is the ordinary outcome in this sector.

Negotiating with a licensing house

[ ] Expect the terms to be standard and the fee to be negotiable. Houses have a form and resist changing it; the guarantee-against-percentage structure, the performance count, and the period are where the negotiation happens.
[ ] Ask about exclusivity explicitly. A restriction on competing productions within a radius and a period is sometimes available and never volunteered.
[ ] Ask about alterations early. Cuts, interpolations, changed settings, and recast roles are matters the playwright may control, and the house forwards the request rather than deciding it. A refusal in pre-production is a design note; a refusal in previews is a crisis.
[ ] Get the grand rights position confirmed in writing by the house, even where it administers both script and score, because "the licence covers the show" means different things to the two sides of the conversation.
[ ] Note that materials are rented, with return obligations, penalties, and sometimes restrictions on marking up.
[ ] Raise the capture question at the outset, even if the expected answer is no, since a house asked for the first time after a hit opens knows exactly what its leverage is.
[ ] Read the recording restriction inside the licence, which is frequently absolute and quietly forecloses the whole Phase 5 exercise before it starts.
[ ] For schools and community companies, ask about sector terms, which exist, are cheap, and are far preferable to the house's alternative course.

Budgets and resourcing

[ ] Allow four to six weeks of calendar time and roughly twenty hours of legal work for the pre-rehearsal clearance on a mid-scale production, most of it spent waiting on other people. Start when the season is announced.
[ ] Build the engagement templates once. Director, designer, choreographer, composer, and performer templates with capture consent built in reduce the marginal cost per production to an hour of tailoring.
[ ] Budget an hour to draft the devised-work agreement and twenty minutes to explain it, with the explanation given by the producer or artistic director rather than a lawyer, since the objection is emotional rather than legal.
[ ] Budget a half-day for title clearance before the artwork, and a season for it afterwards.
[ ] Register in two batches a year, at low cost, to unlock the remedies that make enforcement rational.
[ ] Name the person who owns the rights file. In most companies nobody does, and naming them is the cheapest structural improvement available.

Why the sector under-papers

Understanding the causes makes the remedies easier to sell, because none of them is carelessness.

[ ] The money arrives last. Productions are developed on goodwill and financed only once they look likely to work. Asking a devising company in week one to sign an authorship agreement asks them to spend the little trust they have on a document about a success nobody yet believes in.
[ ] The relationships are long and personal. A director, a designer, and a company who have worked together for fifteen years do not paper their arrangements because doing so names a possibility neither wants to name — which is exactly why the eventual dispute is so damaging.
[ ] The vocabulary is unfamiliar. Grand rights, separability, fixation, and joint authorship are taught nowhere in a theatrical training. The custom the sector follows is generally sound and, on precisely the points that matter most, occasionally wrong.
[ ] The deals are made on the phone. Casting and commissioning happen conversationally, months before contracts issue, and a contract that follows performance is negotiated from a weak position by everyone.
[ ] Nobody expects the show to last. The rights questions bite only on the minority that transfer, tour, revive, or record, so the discipline must be applied to everything to protect the few, and the return is invisible in the ordinary case.
[ ] The remedy is earlier and shorter paper, not more paper. Four documents, none longer than two pages, cover the great majority of what goes wrong. The barrier is not cost or complexity; it is that each must be produced when the show is a hope rather than an asset. That is a management discipline rather than a legal one, and naming it as such is usually what gets it adopted.

[ ] Present the four documents as a template pack rather than as a compliance programme, since a company that receives finished documents adopts them and a company that receives a policy does not.
[ ] Attach the insurer's requirement to the ask, because "our errors and omissions cover depends on this file" moves producers who are unmoved by the doctrine, and it happens to be true.

[ ] Review the pack annually against what actually went wrong, since the failure modes in one company are rarely the failure modes in another, and a template that reflects the company's own near-misses is the only kind anyone reads twice.
[ ] Keep one page of the pack for the board, listing what is protected, what is not, and what is uninsurable, because that page is what secures the budget for everything else.

[ ] Add the near-miss log to the archive, since a company that records what nearly went wrong is a company that stops repeating it.

[ ] Review the log with the general manager at the end of each season, when the memory is fresh and the next season's contracts have not yet issued.

Key Authorities at a Glance

| Authority | Phase | |---|---| | 17 U.S.C. § 102 | 2 — fixation; choreography as subject matter | | 17 U.S.C. § 101 | 2 — work made for hire; public performance | | 17 U.S.C. § 106 | 1, 5 — performance and derivative rights | | 17 U.S.C. § 201 | 3 — joint authorship in devised work | | 17 U.S.C. § 204 | 2 — the signed writing | | CCNV v. Reid | 2 — employee or contractor | | 17 U.S.C. § 203 | 1, 10 — termination windows | | Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands | Formats — separability | | Mazer v. Stein | Formats — art in useful objects | | Feist v. Rural Telephone | 2 — originality in steps and blocking | | 17 U.S.C. § 107 | Formats — parody and excerpts | | Campbell v. Acuff-Rose | Formats — parody analysis | | Warhol v. Goldsmith | Formats — purpose comparison | | ABC v. Aereo | 5 — transmission to the public | | 17 U.S.C. § 408 | 5, 8 — registering a capture | | 17 U.S.C. § 411 | 5 — registration before suit | | Fourth Estate v. Wall-Street.com | 5 — completion of registration | | 17 U.S.C. § 412 | 5, 8 — timely registration and remedies | | 17 U.S.C. § 504 | 8 — damages framework | | 17 U.S.C. § 110 | Formats — the narrow educational exemption | | 17 U.S.C. § 1101 | 4 — unauthorised fixation of live music | | 18 U.S.C. § 2319A | 4 — criminal analogue | | 17 U.S.C. § 106A | Formats — site-specific elements | | 17 U.S.C. § 512 | 5 — distributing and policing a capture | | 15 U.S.C. § 1052 | 7 — registering names, logos, merchandise | | 15 U.S.C. § 1125 | 7 — ambush and false association | | Jack Daniel's v. VIP Products | 7 — narrowed expressive-use space | | 18 U.S.C. § 1839 | 8 — the mailing list as an asset |

Search the underlying materials directly for grand rights carve out blanket licence, theatrical design copyright ownership dispute, devised work joint authorship transfer, stage capture union consent, and show title trademark clearance.