Re: Author copyright issue (SLEEP)

[Sandy Thatcher <sandy.thatcher@alumni.princeton.edu>]

Well, there are any number of sources that one can choose: just 
Google "nonexclusive rights, copyright, standing to sue" and you 
will find plenty. Here is one, which says:

The exclusive rights of a copyright owner may be licensed on an 
exclusive basis (i.e., copyright ownership in one or more rights 
is transferred by the copyright owner) or on a nonexclusive basis 
(i.e., the copyright owner retains ownership of the copyright and 
may grant similar licenses to others). A nonexclusive licensee is 
not a copyright owner and thus does not have standing to sue for 
any infringement of the copyright in the work by others.

http://www.ladas.com/NII/CopyrightOwnership.html

Sandy Thatcher


>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