A writer, an illustrator and a developer finish a small game together. One build, one studio name on the title screen, a shared folder full of drafts. Nobody wrote down who did what. Two years later a publisher asks who owns it, and the question has to be answered in a week.
What Swiss law says about the three of them, and what each one can prove today with the files they already have.
What the law calls the three of you
Under Article 6 of the Swiss Copyright Act, the author is the natural person who created the work. Not the studio. A person.
When more than one person contributed as an author, Article 7 applies. Copyright belongs to all of them jointly (paragraph 1). Unless they agreed otherwise, they may only use the work with the consent of every author, and consent may not be withheld contrary to good faith (paragraph 2). Each joint author may bring an action for infringement independently, but may only ask for relief for the benefit of all (paragraph 3). Where the contributions can be separated and nothing else was agreed, each may use their own contribution on its own, as long as that does not impair exploitation of the joint work (paragraph 4).
Paragraph 4 is where the illustrator asks whether she may sell prints of her characters. The law leaves that to the three of you, unless something was written down.
Whose name is on the copies
Article 8 paragraph 1 adds a presumption: unless proven otherwise, the author is the person whose name, pseudonym or distinctive sign appears on the copies or publication of the work. If the title screen names one of the three, that person starts with the presumption and the other two have to prove their way in.
That is the easiest gap to close. Put all three names on the work.
What each person can prove on their own
A name on a title screen is a claim. The drafts behind it are evidence. On Swiss Trust Layer, each contributor seals their own contribution from their own account. The illustrator seals her sketches and final art, the writer his script. The developer seals the source and the builds. Sealing computes a cryptographic fingerprint of each file and sends only that fingerprint to Swisscom Trust Services, the qualified trust service provider, which signs it. The signature carries an RFC 3161 timestamp. The original file is never altered.
Under Article 41(2) of the eIDAS Regulation, a qualified electronic time stamp enjoys the presumption of the accuracy of the date and time it indicates and of the integrity of the data bound to it. The illustrator can show that this sketch existed on this day and has not changed since.
Drafts matter as much as the final. A folder has a version history, each version is sealed and certified separately, and a note can be attached to each one. Seal the rough sketch as version one and the finished piece later, and you have a dated trail. Each version gets its own certificate of proof, a PDF listing every file with its name and fingerprint, plus an ISCC content code where the format supports it.
What the certificate says about the people
A timestamp does not prove who wrote a file. For that, the certificate has further lines, which appear when a file carries a declaration: "AI Declaration" with the content labels, "Human authors", "Approved by", "Rights claimed" and "Other rights holders".
Those lines come from a declaration the sealer makes, and a declaration needs identity verification first: a passport check through DIDIT, provided via Swisscom Trust Services. Each file and version carries exactly one AI label. HUMAN AUTHORED can be declared together with AI FREE and with no other AI label. HUMAN APPROVED can sit with any AI label, but it has to come from a different person than the author. Both HUMAN labels are bound to a verified identity, and the identity block on the certificate is a snapshot taken at sealing time, so a later change never rewrites an issued version. The illustrator's art, declared HUMAN AUTHORED under her verified name, carries her name on a dated, fingerprinted record instead of in someone's memory.
The document all three stand behind
Then there is the one file the whole team signs: the final build, or the agreement about it. The portal has a multi-signer flow for this. The owner of the sealed folder adds the co-owners as signers, a signature field for each is placed on the PDF, the owner signs before the invitations continue, and each co-owner then signs with their own qualified signature. The certificate becomes available once the owner has signed.
Under Article 14 paragraph 2bis of the Swiss Code of Obligations, a qualified electronic signature combined with a qualified time stamp under ZertES is deemed equivalent to a handwritten signature, subject to any statutory or contractual provision to the contrary.
A sealed folder can also be shared with other users with roles, and a publisher can check any certificate through its QR code on the public verification page without a login.
What a seal does not show
Be plain about the limit, because the other side will find it. A seal shows who sealed which file and when. It does not show the share of each contribution, and it does not show the agreement between the three of you.
The agreement is itself a document. Write it, even one page, seal it, and sign it through the multi-signer flow. Now the thing Article 7 keeps pointing to, "unless agreed otherwise", exists and has a date.
Registering the work
With the contributions and the agreement sealed, the work can go into the Swiss Copyright Registry, with ProLitteris as partner. The earlier post on what authors and publishers should seal first gives the same order for a single writer; a team follows it per person.
One step this week
Each of the three seals the oldest draft they still have, with a note on the version saying what it is. One sitting per person, and it puts a date on something that had none. The labels can follow, and so can the agreement.
Seal your first document on Swiss Trust Layer or read the full mechanism on how it works.
