Re: L.Rev (C) Release

From: Jessica Litman <litman[_at_]mindspring.com>
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 08:58:52 -0400

On 10/27/99, Bruce Hayden <bhayden[_at_]ieee.org> wrote:
>
> But that brings me to the next question, which is why do
> the parties asking for these assignments think that the
> party signing has the right to give such rights away?
> Typically, the person who wrote the work is the one signing.
> While this may be effective for students, for most everyone
> else, there is arguably a work-for-hire situation involved.

     Universities have gotten themselves into this mess by declining to change their copyright policies in the wake of the 1976 Act. (Most of them, anyway. Wayne State's employment contract reserves copyright in faculty scholarship to the employees.) Since Universities encourage, nay require, faculty to publish, and since they leave the individual faculty members to their own devices in arranging the details of publication, one can only assume that the writers of these articles are their universities' agents for the purposes of copyright assignment and license.

     (I never sign them either.)

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Jessica Litman
Professor of Law, Wayne State University litman[_at_]mindspring.com Received on Thu Oct 28 1999 - 13:05:21 GMT