RE: publisher copyright agreements routinely violate federal regs

["David Goodman" <David.Goodman@liu.edu>]

I think Sam has demonstrated quite thoughly that publishers in general are
not following the US law with respect to US goverment funded work -- as
distinct from federally-conducted work in a US government laboratory.

Within the narrower question of US government laboratory work, I have seen
agreements in which publishers claim that by one device or another the
copyright even for such work can be transferred to them--usually by
assigning the government's rights to any non-govenrment-employed coauthor.
I am not sufficiently knowledgable of the requirements of other countries
to comment on them.

I suggest that both knowledge and practice in the real world is much less
correct than Sally assumes.

David Goodman
Associate Professor
Palmer School of Library and Information Science, Long Island 
University.

-----Original Message-----
From:	Sally Morris [mailto:sec-gen@alpsp.org]
Sent:	Mon 9/15/2003 1:01 AM
To:	liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject:	Re: publisher copyright agreements routinely violate federal regs

I'm getting tired of hearing myself and others repeat this:

Most (probably all) publishers are well aware of the special legal
arrangements which need to be made for US (and other) Government employees
and DO NOT seek rights which those authors do not have the right to
transfer

They will normally do this by means of a special form which they use in
those circumstances - this is not the form that the ROMEO project looked
at.

Sally Morris, Secretary-General
Phone:  01903 871686 Fax:  01903 871457 E-mail:  sec-gen@alpsp.org