Re: Univ. rights -Reply

On Tue, 14 Feb 1995, Diane M. Istvan wrote:
>
> In the absence of the U giving up the rights, you have a clear
> employee work for hire situation - an employee creating the work
> within her scope of employment - U ownes the copyright. Having
> said that - most universities are very liberal in relinquishing
> their rights to encourage the activity. The U probably has an
> existing policy on this which you should get.
>
> Diane Istvan
> Foster Pepper & Shefelman
> Seattle, Washington
> <istvd[_at_]foster.com>

The courts, however, have sometimes failed to apply the work for hire doctrine against university professors. Consider this quote from Williams v. Weisser, 78 Cal. Rptr. 542 (1969):

	... the undesirable consequences which would follow
	from a holding that a university owns the copyright
	to the lectures of its professors are such as to 
	compel a holding that it does not.

For a footnote discussion of this topic, see Nimmer on Copyright, Vol. 1, Section 5.03[B], fn. 94.

Jeff Becker
Haynes and Boone
Dallas, Texas
becker[_at_]metronet.com Received on Tue Feb 14 1995 - 18:26:58 GMT