Re: Author copyright issue (SLEEP)

[Kevin Smith <kevin.l.smith@duke.edu>]

Sandy,

Can you give us any authorities for the proposition that a party 
who holds less than exclusive rights has no standing to sue to 
defend the rights they do hold?  If that were true I would expect 
many fewer lawsuits in the IP realm than we actually see.  As I 
recall standing, a plaintiff simply has to show real injury to 
their legitimate interests, which even a licensee should be able 
to show in some instances.

Kevin L. Smith
Director of Scholarly Communications
Duke University
Perkins Library, Room 113
kevin.l.smith@duke.edu


On Jan 16, 2011, at 8:00 PM, "Sandy Thatcher" <sandy.thatcher@alumni.princeton.edu> wrote:

> I would say that, in general, no journal publisher that had to 
> recover costs from sales (so not including OA publishers) would 
> willingly accept only a nonexclusive transfer of rights 
> because, without exclusive rights, the publisher would have no 
> standing to sue to protect its investment in its journals.
>
> I would add that most publishers do not want to deal with a 
> stream of requests to alter their contracts, but prefer to 
> handle such matters as Green OA either by incorporating a 
> reference in the contract offered to the author or by posting a 
> blanket policy on their web sites.
>
> Sandy Thatcher
>
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> The UCLA Library is working with a faculty member here who has
>> submitted an article to the journal Sleep.  We advised the
>> author to modify the author's agreement, using the SPARC
>> author's addendum, to retain copyright. The author received a
>> reply from Sleep, which rejected the change, stating "I have
>> never heard of any journal doing this.  Sleep would not publish
>> any paper it does not hold copyright to."
>>
>> We're curious to know if anyone on the list has negotiated with
>> Sleep in the past and what their experiences have been.  Thanks
>> for any input you can give us.
>>
>> Andy Stancliffe
>> Digital Acquisitions Coordinator
>> UCLA Library