Hi, I have a question. I hope it is sufficiently relevant to this list. If not, perhaps someone could point me in the direction of a more appropriate list.
If I am right in thinking that the increasing interest in self-archiving amongst researchers, universities and academic staff is leading to a greater appreciation of - amongst other things - intellectual property issues and the potential monetary value of IP (if only as a result of the realisation that commercial publishers have done very well out of it thank you very much), then is there not perhaps a danger that universities and other research institutes might seek to monetise the IP of their employees in the manner that commercial publishers have done, and a situation develop in which academic staff find that having freed their research from the financial firewall created by publishers, that their employers seek to create a whole new financial firewall, by moving to lock up the newly created institutional archives and attempt to turn them into revenue streams for the institution? After all, universities are increasingly being asked to behave more like commercial enterprises, and to seek funds not only from businesses, but by monetising the IP created by their own staff/ spinning out companies based on research done within the institution etc. I suspect that today this is mainly a patent issue, but I found a web site set up by a UK university the other day that has a whole section on IP, with the statement that the university was moving to "assert it's right to ownership of IP generated by employees where this is permitted by law". There then followed an extract from the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988; Section 11 stating: "Where a literary work [includes computer programs, dramatic, musical or artistic work] is made by an employee in the course of his employment, his employer is the first owner of any copyright in the work subject to any agreement to the contrary." As financial pressure increases, and the commercial spirit within universities intensifies, might not some universities want to suggest that the copyright in refereed papers/journal articles also belongs to them, and attempt to monetise that ownership? Or is this a misreading of the employer/employee relationship of academic staff and their institution, and the true ownership of the copyright in journal articles written by academic staff/ institutional researchers? I'd appreciate any responses/ views/ experiences/ explanations as to why this might or might not be a realistic scenario. Best wishes, Richard Poynder Richard Poynder Freelance Journalist Phone: + 44 (0)191-386-0072 Mobile: 0793-202-4032 E-mail: [email protected] Web: www.richardpoynder.com
