Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
scholarly output. Nevertheless, universities have never assumed the
position of ownership. In practice, they have waived their rights and
still do so; they hardly ever formally claim their copyright. Thus,
custom and practice have established the position that, in higher
education in the UK, copyright in scholarly works generally lies with
employees. A JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) study
conducted in 2000 showed that a majority of those universities that had
a copyright policy had waived their copyright in journal articles and
books (Weedon, 2000). A 2005 study on copyright policies in the
Netherlands and the UK came to the same conclusion (Weedon and
Mossink, 2006).
Exceptions to the established practice of university scholars owning
copyright in their works are where institutions commission a piece of
work specifically from a member of staff, or where the work is funded
by an external organization. Here, copyright may be assigned to the
institution or the funding organization as part of the agreement or
contract.
USA law
If a work fulfils the requirements for protection, ownership of copyright
will, in principle, be assigned to the maker.
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However, the USA
Copyright Act, like that of the UK, contains a clause allowing for
someone other than the maker to be the legal owner of the copyright;
this is the 'work made for hire doctrine'. According to this doctrine, an
employer or a commissioning party (who pays for the creation of the
work) is deemed to be the author, rather than the employee or
commissioned party (who actually conceives and fixes the expression).
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There are two categories of work made for hire: works made by
employees, and works made on commission. Different rules apply to the
two categories.
The first category is a work prepared in the course of employment.
The courts in the USA take a number of factors into consideration when
deciding whether a work falls into this category: whether it is of the
kind that an employee was employed to prepare, whether its
preparation takes place primarily within the employer's time and place
specifications, and whether the work was initiated, at least in part, by a
purpose to serve the employer. Other factors may be considered, such
