or, UCD Law School, Intellectual Property Expert, and member of UC systemwide standing committee on UC copyright policy.
· Historically little interest in lectures or lecture materials-negligible value.
· New technologies make these more useful (online classes) and thus possibly more valuable.
· Other than in the academic community, most work created while employed is considered work for hire, owned by employer.
· Under the 1909 copyright act, there was a teacher exemption to the work for hire doctrine. It can be argued that the exemption still exists, as it has long been the academic tradition that professors own the copyright to their scholarly work. For materials prepared for teaching, the legal situation is particularly unclear.
· Good arguments can be made to extend tradition to these new situations, but without case law or new statutes, the situation is uncertain.
Kim Mueller, Intellectual Property Lawyer from Sacramento
· Even where the law is not clear, there are measures you can take to lessen the risk of needing a lawyer to protect your work – or at least improve your chances of enforcing your rights if need be.
· You can sell some or all of the bundle of rights known as copyright, so agreements are important. Read the fine print and don’t sign what you don’t understand.
· Correspondence can establish a tacit agreement even if you don’t sign a contract, so don’t ignore messages that deal with your classes, lecture materials or other scholarly work.
· Even if you are working in collaboration with UC administration to create instructional materials, be aware of the possibility that you may retain rights of joint ownership in the resulting work.
· Monitor developing policy at UC-it will affect you!
· Notify your classes of the significance of 980 related to live lectures, and put copyright notices in your handouts. These notices can head off a lot of problems, or at least preclude claims of “innocent infringement.” (A good simple form of notice is “Copyright 2001 by UC Professor. All Rights Reserved.”)
· Look out for improper use of your material (monitor websites such as collegeclub.com) and complain quickly. If you do nothing for a long time it may be assumed you agree with the “use” of your material and any legal battle will be much more difficult to win
· Registration of copyrighted material also strengthens your legal position. In particular, timely registration – meaning within 3 months of the first public distribution of a work – preserves your ability to collect “lump sum” damages and legal fees as provided by federal law.
· Even though there are uncertainties in the law, there also are strong legal grounds for faculty to claim ownership rights in lecture material, unless rights have been signed away in a contract. These same grounds provide a basis for enforcement actions when needed.
Alan Elms, DFA Representative, Professor of Psychology
· Web services threaten copyright, but are a small risk
· The reuse of lecture materials by UC using technology to accommodate more students is a very large risk to the faculty
· Vigilance! The faculty must be aware of the situation or we could be taken by surprise
· There is no risk if we participate fully in the implementation of online or distance education material and are full partners in any agreements to the use of these materials.
Discussion Issues
· In general, it appears that the faculty own their scholarly work unless the university makes an extraordinary contribution to the final product. However, the meaning of extraordinary is not well defined.
· If you want clarity in the ownership of your work vis a vis the University, then set up a contract to spell that out.
· Be careful, as your ownership rights can be sold outright by an agreement.
· University policy requested in Education code section 66452(A) should prohibit the commercial use of all lecture material except for a short list of permitted uses, such as Classical Notes, exchange between students in the same class, and with written permission from the instructor.
We invite your comments. Simply reply to this email. The DFA might choose to forward comments to the Standing Committee on Copyright that was formed to explore the issues surrounding copyright and potentially to establish UC policy. The committee is chaired by Rory Hume, Executive Vice Chancellor at UCLA. If you do not want your comments forwarded, or wish to do so only anonymously, please let us know.