Can more than one person be the copyright owner of a copyright work?

Yes. Where two or more people have created a single work protected by copyright, those people are generally joint authors and joint first owners. However, this might not apply where, for example, these people are employees - see the general position on the ownership of copyright.

Joint ownership might arise, for example, if a person was commissioned to create a website together with one of the company's employees. It is likely that both the person being commissioned, and the company, would be joint first owners of copyright in the website.

If someone wanted to copy, for example, a work of joint ownership, all of the owners would have to agree to such a request, otherwise an infringement of copyright could still occur.

Where individual contributions are distinct or separate, however, each person would be the author of the part they created. Whether this is a copyright work and who owns copyright would follow the normal rules. In these circumstances, copying of a particular contribution would only need the permission of the copyright owner of that part, but copying of the whole of what has been produced would obviously need the permission of all of the copyright owners involved.

Of course, ownership of copyright can be transferred, so where something is produced that has involved contributions from more than one person, either where those people are joint authors or where they provide distinct contributions, it would be possible for copyright in all the material to be owned by one person as a result of appropriate transfers. Indeed, collaborators can agree in advance that copyright in what is to be produced should be owned by a single person or body. This could be helpful when permission needs to be given in the future about use of what has been produced collaboratively. However, alternative solutions that might be equally helpful could involve all parties agreeing licensing arrangements in advance, or agreeing to license their rights through a single person acting on their behalf.