At 12:31 PM 9/9/98 -0400, you wrote:
>An understandable summary of the provisions of U.S. copyright law can be
>read at http://www.nolo.com/PCTM/2overview.html/ with links to sources of
>more detailed information. At that URL, I found:
>
> 3. Who owns a copyright?
>
> With three important exceptions, copyrights are owned by the
> writers, poets, musicians, choreographers, composers, artists,
> software designers, sculptors, photographers, movie producers,
> craftspersons and other persons who create them. In the copyright
> world, these people are all called "authors." Now for the
> exceptions:
>
> If a work is created by an employee in the course of his or her
> employment, the work is called a "work made for hire" and the
> copyright is owned by the employer."
>
>Apparently, scientists may academia not personally own the copyright
>to their scientific papers, just as they don't often own the patent
>rights, unless their employer (the university or college) signs it
>over to them.
>
This is discussed at some length in
Shores C. 1996. Ownership of faculty works and university copyright policy.
ARL, a Bimonthly Newsletter Of Research Library Issues And Actions No.
189.
(on the Web at
http://arl.cni.org/newsltr/189/owner.html)
The conclusion is that universities are unlikely to try to claim ownership
of journal articles.
Tom W.
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Thomas J. Walker
Department of Entomology & Nematology
University of Florida, PO Box 110620, Gainesville, FL 32611-0620
E-mail: tjw_at_gnv.ifas.ufl.edu FAX: (352)392-0190
Web:
http://csssrvr.entnem.ufl.edu/~walker/tjwbib/walker.htm
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Received on Tue Aug 25 1998 - 19:17:43 BST