Re: Re: Re: Copyright in X-ray works

I don't know of any copyright system that doesn't allow "unnatural" persons to own copyrights (as distinguished from moral rights). And of course the employer could be a natural person, too (and more likely was when the doctrine first evolved). The fact that the employer "automagically" owns the copyright is a fillip on the idea of assignment, to be sure, but my guess is that it was simply an effort to avoid the inevitable paperwork needed to transfer, as well as the concept that the employee is *always* the agent of the employer, while a contractor is, well, a contractor, who might be acting more like an agent or more like an independent artisan.

Vance

On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 17:40:16 -0500, Steven Jamar <sjamar[_at_]law.howard.edu> wrote:
> Because the creators of the works are natural persons -- and in
> civil(ized) countries, the person owns the copyright, not the employer.
>
> On Thursday, March 17, 2005, at 03:35 PM, Vance R. Koven wrote:
>
> >
> > PS: I'm not sure why Steve considers US work-for-hire doctrine
> > "curious." In order for there to be work for hire, somebody has to be
> > hired, no?
>
>
> > --
> Prof. Steven D. Jamar vox:
> 202-806-8017
> Howard University School of Law fax:
> 202-806-8428
> 2900 Van Ness Street NW
> mailto:sjamar[_at_]law.howard.edu
> Washington, DC 20008
> http://www.law.howard.edu/faculty/pages/jamar
>
> "For all men of good will May 17, 1954, came as a joyous daybreak to
> end the long night of enforced segregation. . . . It served to
> transform the fatigue of despair into the buoyancy of hope."
>
> Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1960 on Brown v. Board of Education
>
>

-- 
Vance R. Koven
Boston, MA USA
vrkoven[_at_]world.std.com