The Pitfalls of Perpetuity Contracts in Voice-Over

The Pitfalls of Perpetuity Contracts in Voice-Over

Two years later, in 2005, Greg was asked to sign, and did sign, a “voice release grant”, which gave ownership of these previous recordings to IBM and its subsidiaries.

Since then, a digital clone of Greg’s voice has been created and is now available for further sale.

This (audibly inferior) computerised imitation, who isn’t even called Greg, can be programmed to say anything – even things the real Greg wouldn’t be happy saying himself, if you paid him.

Of course, ‘assignment of rights’ is nothing new. It’s a perfectly legal mechanism. However, there are many things that are legal, yet still objectionable, depending on your view.

And in the voice-over industry, it’s ‘in-perpetuity’ contracts, which as one Danish beer brand might put it, are:

‘probably the most objectionable contracts… in the world’.

Unless you’re the client who controls and monetises the rights, that is.

For some people, these client-weighted contracts work fine: the use of intellectual property and its ownership are dealt with through a mutually agreed, one-off fee, and two quick signatures.

As long as both parties understand what they’re consenting to, agree to the amount of money changing hands, and to the true scope and intentions behind the terms, there can be no objections.

However, in Greg’s case, there doubtless are questions around these things, which lawyers on both sides will need to resolve.

The Principal Problem of Perpetuity

Whatever your view, there nevertheless remain many valid questions to be asked of perpetuity clauses.

The most salient one being: why do they attempt the impossible, which is to vainly challenge universal natural laws and outlast all things in existence?

Because in reality, nothing is perpetual.

Where the universe began with the ‘Big Bang’, it is theorised, it will end with the ‘Big Crunch’. Where there is marriage, there is divorce. And where there is birth, there is death. The list of existential beginnings and endings – though seemingly perpetual – is anything but.

All things exist for a time, then inevitably cease to exist.

This automatically means that the ‘in-perpetuity’ contract cannot be immune to the inexorable march of time.

Because time, in fact, is a luxury for those who know its true value (a notion that actor John Hannah skilfully contemplates in the commercial above).

Yet even if you work in a business that hasn’t grasped this concept, time will still keep “ticking away”, eroding every single element of your own, and its own, limited existence.

Documents will get lost, moved or destroyed – deliberately or accidentally. Electronic files, too. Companies will move offices, go bust, or get taken over. Workers will change jobs, get sacked, or retire.

People will forget who signed what and what the terms were. Memories will fade.

Ultimately, the only constant in commerce is change.

And the tick tock, tick tock, of the ticking clock.

This presents an embarrassing (and, in fact, perpetual) problem for the perpetuity contract (if it still exists), because if enough time has passed, the agreement becomes an irrelevant relic; an exhibit of long-exhausted usefulness and time-worn terms.

Eventually, a quaint piece of publishing.

Much like this now highly amusing corporate video from AOL (America On Line), an internet-surfing platform, which around 30 years ago was declared: “the greatest service available”.

Well, clearly not anymore.

However, worryingly, the in-perpetuity contract can even claim, in its old age, to do things that could not have been conceived of when it was first drafted.

This can obviously turn a full assignment of rights (as in Greg’s case) in the past into a highly arguable wrong in the present.

Boom and Bust

But what cannot be argued, even by lawyers, is that ‘in-perpetuity’ contracts are as temporary as the companies that draw them up.

Businesses are born, boom (if they’re lucky), and with enough time (or not very much time), pull a Who?-dini and disappear into history.

Just take a look at these examples:

Airlines:

Pan-Am, US Airways, Continental, FlyBe, Buzz, Go

Motor manufacturers:

Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Austin, Morris, Triumph, DeLorean, Saab

High street chains:

C&A, Woolworths, Borders, Blockbuster, Tie Rack, BHS, Debenhams, Maplin, Phones4U

All of these had their time, until their time was up.

Curiously enough, there was even a UK gift retailer called Past Times, which sold imitations of period-style merchandise. Fittingly, it slipped into administration – and into history – in 2012.

Of course, any list of commercial enterprises going kaputt is going to be potentially endless, because companies will continue to come and go, as they always have.

Just last year, in 2022, the UK recorded more than more than 22,000 insolvencies. That’s a lot of businesses falling on hard times.

Infinity Fools

This is all very unfortunate for the people and companies involved, of course.

But despite the obvious transience, the natural ebbs and flows of business, and chiefly, all of the limits placed on all existence, intellectual property rights assigned in perpetuity are supposed to have God-like everlasting life.

It’s a notion that should present a conundrum to any philosopher or lawyer, which might go:

How can a transfer of rights be infinite,

if the fundamental ‘contract’ of the universe is that anything and everything that exists within it is finite?

Or for the arty types among us:

If all things that exist are temporary

Should not also contracted terms be? 

Granted, some people may wrestle mentally with such existential concepts in their contract negotiations (as Andrew Scott does, so agonisingly, in his performance of the famous Hamlet soliloquy):

But if you think about it carefully, you’ll come to the same conclusion as me. And that is that – undoubtedly – all things that exist are temporary.

They come into being. Then they come out of being. They are. Then they aren’t.

They are either in time, or they are out of time. They either have their place, or they are out of place – ‘in-perpetuity’ contract clauses included.

In the creative, commercial, contractual race against time, time is unbeaten. It is, it was, it always will be.

So, really. To be? In perpetuity?

Physically, philosophically, humanly, practically, universally – that cannot be.

That is not even a question.

 

Thanks for reading – and in the meantime, happy voice-over hiring.

If you liked this article, please share it via the social media buttons above. A credit and a thank you are always appreciated.

 

Further reading

Five Ways to Write Voice-Over Copy Like a Jedi – Chas Rowe

Five Keys to A Successful Voiceover Project – Chas Rowe