Re: Twist on Work for Hire Publishing

On 04/23/98, Michael Bradley <michael[_at_]vision-soft.com> wrote:
>
> Bloomberg, the financial news service, has started a book subsidiary.
> It uses its own reporter employees to write the books, giving them
> paid leave to go off and write, but no contract, no royalties, no
> rights--just their salaries during the paid leaves. Apparently,
> Bloomberg expects the books will be work for hire written within the
> scope of the reporters' employment.
>
> I imagine they're right, but is there any chance that the reporters'
> being _on leave_ negates the writing being within the scope of
> employment?

Depending on the facts, I think that the chance is quite small indeed. I assume the reporters are not just writing any books that they feel like writing, but are writing books that Bloomberg wants them to. Since the subject matter is being dictated by the employer, that looks to me like it is within the scope of their employment. Second, it is only in a "lay" sense that they are "on leave." They are "on leave" from their reporting job, but they still have a job; it's just temporarily a different job -- writing books instead of articles. But there is a small chance that a court would see it differently (depending on the facts), so I do think Bloomberg's legal counsel should have been more cautious.

Tyler T. Ochoa
Associate Professor
Whittier Law School
tochoa[_at_]law.whittier.edu Received on Fri Apr 24 1998 - 22:13:01 GMT