On Fri, Nov 28, 2003 at 01:44:58AM -0500, David Heller ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:

> If the author creates the work under contract or agreed employment
> "at will", the work belongs to Canon. That's the law. Fair
> compensation or not, my argument is not an opinion. I am stating
> fact of law.

The law of USA perhaps, not of the world.
No international copyright convention I know of requires
such a law, and it indeed varies between countries.

In some countries copyright isn't automatically
transferred to the employer; in some cases it can't even
be so specified generally in employment contract but
must be done separately for every individual work.

What's more, it isn't strictly correct to say "the
work belongs to" Canon even by US law: only economic
copyrights can be transferred, Berne Convention requires
that author's moral rights are respected and they cannot be
transferred. (Not that they matter much in cases like this.)

Of course, I don't know where Canon has their manuals written or
translated and what laws apply there, and presumably they've taken
care of their rights well enough in any case, so all that is of no
practical consequence: the end result is that it's up to Canon 
how they want to distribute their manuals.

-- 
Tapani Tarvainen
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