Re: L.Rev (C) Release

On 10/27/99, Richard A. Schafer <schafer[_at_]mail.utexas.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.
>
> Although I can't speak for that particular journal, as a former journal
> editor I can make some guesses:
>
> 1. Journals really want to be the first to publish articles. We
> would refuse out of hand any submission that had ever been
> published elsewhere, including on a website. It's important to
> the journal's reputation (or so we're taught to believe) that
> they only publish first-publication materials. Why allow
> publication (even pre-publication) in non-English languages? I
> suspect largely because a) no one ever translates law review
> articles and b) foreign language journals are in competition
> with English language journals.
>
> 2. Actually, there *is* money in there. Our journal's contract with
> Westlaw paid us for every hit on an article from our journal.
> While not enough to raise a family on, we received significant
> funds from this annually. So it's *very* important to be able
> to get rights to republish the article on services like Lexis
> and Westlaw.

Richard,

The journal can do the same thing under a license, without owning the copyright.

John Allison
allisonj[_at_]mail.utexas.edu Received on Thu Oct 28 1999 - 12:49:19 GMT