Who holds the legal copyright for footage?

[Mark M]

I did some filming on a camera, the camera belongs to the company I work for and I didn't pay to use it. Some of the footage included a family that I was snorkeling with. Now the company says that they own the footage and want to use it for marketing purposes. The family did not sign any wavers saying they could be filmed for commercial purposes. They thought it was low key and that they would get a DVD out of it. The company also wanted me to charge them for the DVD which I refused to do. So I guess my question is, who owns the copyright to that footage?? Can I tell the company that they can't use that footage? If the people in the film did not sign wavers can it be used for commercial advertising/commercial production?

[ladyaibrean]

Because you are an employee then anything done there is work-for-hire and they own the copyright. If you are just a contractor (that HASN'T signed a work-for-hire contact) then you would own it. Copyright law doesn't yet cover materials used in the copyright, just the final piece itself. It's just like if you made a design in Photoshop and copyrighted it...Adobe doesn't own it, even though they own what you created the work with.

And yes, unless the actual people photographed work for the company they would have to sign a model release form.