|
« AAUP Homepage
|
AAUP Files Brief in Intellectual Property Case
By Gwendolyn Bradley
The AAUP filed an amicus brief in July in a Kansas Supreme Court case on faculty ownership of intellectual property. Pittsburg State University/Kansas National Education Association v. Kansas Board of Regents was brought by the Pittsburg State University ’s local chapter of the Kansas National Education Association (KNEA) against the university and the Kansas Board of Regents because of the regents’ proposed policy giving ownership of faculty intellectual property to institutions. KNEA argued that intellectual property ownership was a mandatory subject of collective bargaining, and thus such a change in policy could not be implemented unilaterally.
In 2004, a Kansas appellate court ruled against the KNEA, stating that copyright ownership was not a mandatory subject of bargaining, because such a practice would conflict with the federal law’s provision that an author may negotiate away his or her intellectual property rights but cannot be required to do so. To reach this conclusion, the court assumed that faculty intellectual property was work for hire, and thus the property of the university. However, under both law and AAUP-supported policy, faculty members are generally the owners of their own intellectual work products.
The KNEA appealed the case to the Kansas Supreme Court. While the case also deals with broader collective bargaining issues, the AAUP’s interest in it is focused on the ownership of faculty intellectual property. In the brief, the Association argues that the work-for-hire doctrine does not include faculty intellectual property, pointing out that federal appellate court decisions, traditional academic practices, and notions of academic freedom presume that faculty retain ownership of their work as original authors. The AAUP’s Statement on Copyright holds that in traditional academic works “the faculty member rather than the institution determines the subject matter, the intellectual approach and direction, and the conclusions,” which is inherently inconsistent with the work-for-hire analysis. AAUP-recommended policy recognizes that some faculty work may be work for hire, but such work would require use of extraordinary resources. The use of traditional resources “such as office space, supplies, library facilities, ordinary access to computer and networks, and money,” are not sufficient to make faculty work into work for hire. The amicus brief is available.
|