Given the language in section 201(b) that makes the employer the author of a WFH "unless the parties have expressly agreed otherwise in a written instrument signed by them," does any one else worry that many university policies would not be effective, even if they purport to give the rights to the faculty member? If the university later decided to claim ownership anyway, would the policy be effective if it were simply a statement contained in a faculty handbook, for instance, not an instrument signed by both parties? I am not saying that would be good policy for a university, just wondering what weight a court might actually give the policy in those circumstances.
Kevin L. Smith, M.A., M.L.S., J.D.
Director, Pilgrim Library
Defiance College
201 College Place
Defiance, OH 43512
419-783-2482
ksmith[_at_]defiance.edu
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/
"The aim of education must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals who, however, see in the service to the community their highest life achievement."
Albert Einstein Received on Thu Aug 18 2005 - 23:29:15 GMT
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