On 11/02/15 11:45, Donal K. Fellows wrote:
On 11/02/2015 00:05, Stian Soiland-Reyes wrote:
Being owned by you on myExperiment does not automatically mean you
(e.g. Univ of Manchester) is the sole copyright holder though - a
complex enough workflows could be argued to be intellectual property
just like code - if you rebuild a workflow in a 1:1 match then it's
not much different from say printing out the Windows source code and
and typing in again - Microsoft would still be the copyright holder.
Tracing ownership across magical thought transference (err, talking to
each other ;-)) is a non-starter. Do Not Go There. Provided the creator
was an employee of the University of Manchester *at the time* that the
workflow was created, and we use a version that dates from then, the
University can unilaterally change the license (e.g., by making it
available under another license). This is part of the general conditions
in the terms of employment.
In other words, if Katy was being paid by us at the time the workflow
was made, we can make the version of it contributed entirely safe. :-)
It's the copies of various specifications that are the problem.
Donal.
A general comment:
There is copyright and there is intellectual property. They are different.
If someone recodes an algorithm, or a workflow, but not copy the
original bytes, then copyright is different but original IP may well apply.
Some licenses, like MIT and BSD, say nothing about IP (patents). Those
license were written before IP of software was recognized (for better or
worse).
A copyright right is just the right to use the item and change it. By
saying nothing about IP, there is no right to use any associated IP in
the changed thing.
Andy
