Re: publisher copyright agreements routinely violate federal regs

["Sally Morris" <sec-gen@alpsp.org>]

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
Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK

Phone:  01903 871686 Fax:  01903 871457 E-mail:  sec-gen@alpsp.org
ALPSP Website  http://www.alpsp.org

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Samuel Trosow" <strosow@uwo.ca>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Friday, September 12, 2003 11:41 PM
Subject: publisher copyright agreements routinely violate federal regs

Sally Morris wrote:

> I don't believe it's fair to say that publishers are by any means abusing
> the system;  pretty much all, I would say, are well aware of the different
> copyright arrangements for Government works in various countries, and deal
> with these entirely correctly - where they don't, I would suspect
> ignorance rather than anything worse.  The situation has various
> complications, however:

As I've argued before with respect to works resulting from federally
subsidized researh, the federal government retains various non-exclusive
rights with respect to the work (OMB Circular A-110, section 36 and
various Code of Federal Regulations provisions, such as 45 CFR �74.36)

[SNIP]

It doesn't matter which of the two surveys discussed on this list you want
to use. It is abundantly clear that most publishers demand exclusive
rights as a condition for accepting the work for publication.

So again, I make the claim that publishers routinely violate these
provisions when they seek exclusive rights because the original author
really does not even have exclusive rights to grant away in the first
place because of the express reservation. A grant of a non-exclusive right
is appropriate, a grant of exclusive rights is not. So yes, I do think
that many publishers ARE abusing the system. Unfortunately, the federal
agencies have not enforced these provisions which is one of the reasons
why I think additional Congressional action (i.e., the Sabo Bill) is
warranted at this time.

Could a publisher who seeks exclusive rights from authors please explain
why they continue to do this? Are you unaware of these provisions? Or am I
misreading these provisions?

Samuel Trosow
University of Western Ontario