Welcome back to this next stage in our journey through copyright law. Today, we're going to revisit the work for hire doctrine. We've talked about it some early on, but we want to come back to it and talk about it specifically as it applies to teachers and other educators. It's often a question for teachers, who owns this work that I've created? Do I own it, or does my employer own it? >> [LAUGH] Yeah. >> The school district or the university? You've probably had that question. >> Oh, yes, oh, yes, yes and sometimes it's really clear, and sometimes it's not. >> That's right. >> [LAUGH]. >> In the US, the basic rule is that the employer owns the copyright when an employee creates a work within the scope of their regular employment. So for full time teachers, whether they're in elementary school, high school, college, or university. It looks like the default is that the university owns their creative work, or the institution. Excuse me, I just betrayed my own university bias but the default is, as I say, looks to be that the institution owns the work. But there are some limits on the doctrine of work for hire. First of all, work that's done outside the scope of your regular employment is always your own work. But there are also a lot of institutions that have built their own exceptions. That is, as a matter of policy, as a matter of their employment contract they renounce work for hire. Lots of universities do this, I don't know that there's many K through 12 institutions do. It always behooves a, creator who's a teacher, to know what the policy is at the institution she works at. But many institutions will say, ordinary scholarly works for example, the journal articles,. >> Right. >> The books that a university faculty member will create, are not claimed as work for hire they're simply outside the doctrine. Even if we could we won't claim them, but then they get pretty specific, and they vary a good deal. So, course outlines, things that you develop for your teaching may or may not be within the scope of a work for hire waiver that's part of an institution's policy. Special, you know, administrative work that you do, suppose you're regularly a teacher. But you also prepare a report on curriculum revision that may very well be owned by the employer. Because it's not within the scope of any of those exceptions that waive work for hire. Some institutions say, if we provide special support or, you know, extra money or time, course release, that sort of thing. >> Yeah. Then we're going to claim the work that's created as work for hire. >> Yeah, my institution calls that extraordinary support. [LAUGH]. >> Yes, i. >> And that term is purposely vague. [LAUGH]. >> Yes, we, we do, we use, use a similar vague term at my institution. >> Do you? [LAUGH] >> I think we say and we may say extraordinary. >> Mm-hm. To our special support. >> We probably do, yeah. >> That sort of language. >> Yeah, and we talked in another lecture about independent contractors. >> Right. >> And the very specific situations where an independent contractor might or might not own his or her own work. And so a lotta times I know I tell people if you're using people who are on contract who are not part of the, the regular staff of the institution. It's really good to have an explicit agreement at the outset so there's not disappointment, there's not conflict later, or at least it's minimized. >> Right. >> For example, recently my library has started using, contract photographers quite a bit. >> Hm. >> And so we've had very explicit understandings with the photographers about what we own, what they own, what license they retain. And so on, just so that everyone is really clear from the outset what, what is expected when the, when the photographer comes on site [SOUND] from outside and starts doing the work. [SOUND] Similar things happen with other sorts of commissioned work, and sometimes even university or the school employees are commissioned. Or are specially hired to work for someone else for maybe for another institution or another company for some special project. And it's a again a very good idea to get a sense of what your rights are going to be in that situation. For example recently I, I worked with the man who was, developing an online class for another institution. And we we're navigating the ins and outs of his contract with that institution. >> Sure. >> For teaching, for course development and so on, so that he knew what he could use in the future. >> Yeah. >> And also what the university, the other university could use going forward. >> Sure. >> Yeah. >> It's really good to have these agreements up front. >> Yeah. >> Much easier than trying to backfill and figure things out. But there was something else you said that I, I just want to emphasize for a minute, and that is the idea of ownership and license. And, one of the things I tell people quite a lot is, certainly, know what the policy says about ownership. Is it a work for hire? Has the institution renounced work for hire? Are there special categories? All those things are important but also look to see even if the institution owns the work. Do they give you the right to do certain things with your own works? Or if you own the work, what licenses have you given to the university? >> Yeah. >> So balancing the attention to ownership and to these licenses, these use interests that may be divided up. Sometimes that can make the conflict go away. >> Right. >> I've seen that happen. >> Right. Yeah. >> Sometimes it doesn't, but a lot of the time you can say,. >> Yeah. >> Well yeah, we own the thing but you get to do what it is you want to do, so let's not argue. >> Yeah, and some thought about what that might be, what might be of course, you. >> Right. >> Can't really predict the future. >> No. >> But if you, like well, you know, I'm going to teach this again. And so, I might like to use this or that. And if you can negotiate that, it may be very suitable for what you need, yeah. >> Right, right, yeah, the fact is that it's very common for faculty to own their own scholarly work. And that means that they sometimes have the unusual ability to control, how their work is used right up through the point of publication. Most of the time, especially for works that are traditionally published, journal articles, books, institutions don't claim those ownership rights. So, often at least university faculty have an extraordinary amount of control which is both a burden and a boon, I think. >> [LAUGH] >> But it means that it's really important to think carefully about the licenses that they grant, the publication contracts that they sign. How much control they retain, and how much control they give away to publishers because we're not only talking about, rights divvied up between the con, the institution and the author. But also divvied up between the author and the company that ultimately publishes their work. It's often possible to amend those standard agreements that publishers use. There's often somebody in the library whether it's you or, you or >> Hm. >> I at our institutions or librarians who negotiate contracts for a living. There's often somebody who can help you figure out, what rights you have under the institutional policy, what rights you are going to need in the future. And how you can manage those rights even through a publication process to make sure that your best interests are met in the process. >> Thank you for joining us. Now you've taken another step towards become a copyright maven.
