Here is just one source that might help everyone understand these issues. This was written by Donald Passman, Attorney, and taken from
https://www.taxi.com/faq/copyright/copyright-concepts.html

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**What Do You Own?

How about this one: You and Louie sit down together to write a composition, and you write only the music while Louie writes only the lyrics. Suppose you don't like Louie's lyrics and want to take your music and write with somebody else. Can you?

My partner Payson Wolff once told me that creating a joint work is like adding water to a ball of clay and squishing it; it's not so easy to separate the two afterward. My partner Bruce Ramer uses the analogy of scrambling the white and the yolk of the egg together. As you may be starting to guess, the law isn't what you would intuitively think. It says that, even though two people create separate, distinct parts, they each own an interest in the whole work, not just their own contribution. Thus, Louie owns half the music and half the lyrics, and so do you. So you can't just pick up and leave him. Even if you add new lyrics, he still has a percentage of the song.

Does this sound like an absurd result? To some extent, yes; but if you get into dividing up works where the contributions aren't so easily defined as music and lyrics (which is 99% of the time), the alternative is even more impossible. Think, for example, about all the elements that go into making a film. What part is the screenwriter's? The director's? The producer's? The wardrobe designer's? Or what about a song where three people work on the lyrics, while two work on both music and lyrics?
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[This message has been edited by Liszt Laughing (edited 12-17-2005).]

Boo...my name is Doug