Re: Princeton bans academics from handing all copyright..

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

One example of how a university (much in the news these days) 
handles copyright in faculty work is Michigan:

http://www.lib.umich.edu/news/u-m-updates-campus-wide-copyright-policy

Sandy Thatcher


>I am sorry if my post was not clear, but no hyperbole, or even 
>controversy, was intended.
>
>It is, of course, perfectly possible for a university to claim 
>faculty works as work made for hire.  Indeed, many schools do 
>make this claim over certain types of works, but it is fairly 
>rare to assert work for hire over traditional works of faculty 
>scholarship like journal articles.  Staff work is often treated 
>differently. But in any case, my point was that a work for hire 
>claim by the employing institution is very different from a 
>self-imposed non-exclusive license granted to the university by 
>the faculty authors themselves, who must be the copyright 
>holders in order to do so.
>
>As a member of my university's intellectual property board, I 
>can assure you that I perceive no desire at all to assert work 
>for hire over faculty scholarship.
>
>As for the comment about publishers wishing to thwart open 
>access policies, I can simply refer you to the new "author 
>rights" policies adopted by Elsevier and the American Chemical 
>Society. Elsevier especially is very clearly trying to 
>discourage faculty open access policies, attempting to grant 
>more generous rights to authors at schools without such 
>policies. Such new rules from publishers, of course, would not 
>be needed if faculty work was all work for hire, but these 
>publishers clearly understand that this is not the case.  There 
>may be exceptions, but making those exceptions into an argument 
>against the general point is not helpful.
>
>Kevin L. Smith, M.L.S., J.D.
>Director of Scholarly Communications
>Duke University, Perkins Library
>P.O. Box 90193
>kevin.l.smith@duke.edu