Re: Re: "University as author?"

On Aug 17, 2005, at 5:25 PM, Agenbroad, James ((Civ,ARL/CISD)) wrote:

>
>
> And to repeat the refrain once more -- most schools do not claim
> copyright in the academic or artistic or even prosaic things like
> class prep notes and such works of its faculty. But most do claim
> patent in inventions of faculty.
>
> Steve
>
> --But unless they explicitly have a policy granting copyrights to
> the faculty, what difference do their claims make? Of course the
> fact that they generally have ZERO editorial input to academic
> works published by their faculty would IMHO argue against a WMFH
> situation. -Jim.

But editorial input by an employer is not directly relevant to the WMFH category relating to employees. All that matters in such a situation is the scope of the employment. In deciding the scope of employment, a court might look at the amount of editorial input by the employer, but that is a weak factor as compared to the requirements of the job. If I work for a newspaper and my job is to write articles for the newspaper, then even if there is no one who has any editorial input in what I write, it is still a wmfh under the employee category. Editorial input is not the test. The test is scope of employment.

All schools with which I am familiar have a written policy now concerning faculty copyright and IP in general.

Steve

-- 
Prof. Steven D. Jamar                               vox:  202-806-8017
Howard University School of Law                     fax:  202-806-8567
2900 Van Ness Street NW                   mailto:sjamar[_at_]law.howard.edu
Washington, DC  20008   http://www.law.howard.edu/faculty/pages/jamar/

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