Re: L.Rev (C) Release

On 10/26/99, Alfred Yen <yen[_at_]bc.edu> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 25 Oct 99, John Kasdan <kasdan[_at_]columbia.edu> wrote:
> >
> > I recently received a proposed contract from a law school (which shall
> > remain nameless) IP Review. The clause that got to me was:
> >
> > 3. Grant of Rights. The Journal shall have the exclusive worldwide
> > rights of first publication, and of republishing and authorizing the
> > republication, of the Article in the English language, in any and
> > all media now known or later developed, including but not limited to
> > computerized storage and retrieval systems such as Lexis and Westlaw
> > legal research systems, the Internet, and CD-ROM. The Author shall
> > have the right to grant the non-exclusive right of republication of
> > the article in any language other than English, after first
> > publication in the English language by the Journal. (Other stuff
> > about attribution and publicity.)
> >
> > So, as I understand it, I could place my piece on my class web site
> > either with permission of the Journal, or if I translated it into
> > French. I have a couple of questions about this. First, does anyone
> > have any idea of why they want such a right? It's not like there's
> > any money in all this. Secondly, do people in this group sign such
> > things? The Journal assures me that they have been using this clause
> > for a while and that no one has objected. I can't imagine anyone who
> > is publishing in an IP review even contemplating granting such broad
> > rights.
>
> For what it's worth, I never agree to such clauses even though I have
> gotten them about half the time that I have published with law reviews.
> I all cases, I have successfully negotiated around the issue by asking
> why they want such broad rights (they never have had a good explanation)
> and then explaining why I want the ability to act without their
> permission. In all cases I've managed to get law reviews to take
> nonexclusive rights to authorize republishing and reprinting (sometimes
> restricted to limited contexts such as future law review anthologies),
> along with an exclusive right of first publication.
>
> Whenever I have asked how they wound up proposing a grant of rights
> which is that broad, I have generally been told something like "the
> business manager got something written up" or "we followed language in
> some other contract for a book" or whatever. I get the impression that
> the people who draft the agreements operate on the principle "if we can
> get the rights, we might as well, because more rights are presumptively
> in the journal's best interests." When I explain that it is in the
> journal's best interest to allow me to spread the work liberally,
> thereby getting the journal publicity, law review editors seem willing
> to redo the agreement.
>
> Finally, on the "flip side" of the issue, I've also been surprised that
> some law reviews operate without any copyright agreement. Have others
> encountered that?
>
> Anyway, my 2 cents worth. And congrats on the publication.

First, I must admit that I learned this from Mark Lemley. Most editors are willing to bend on the publication agreement after they've already committed to the article. Do not assign your copyright. Grant them a license; they'll need an exclusive for some period after the issue is published, such as 6 months or a year, but after that make it nonexclusive.

John Allison
<allisonj[_at_]mail.utexas.edu> Received on Wed Oct 27 1999 - 14:29:24 GMT