Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[toffeedonut]

I'm a final year undergraduate student in England.  As part of final year my department required us to undertake a project on anything we wanted, and I wrote computer software to solve some process problems for my famiy's business.  As I 'created' the project for myself my supervisor had minimal invovlement in it and assured me a number of times there'd be no problems for my family to use it.  But now that the technology might be used commercially, I've been hearing that my university may own the copyright to it.  Is this right? What can I do?

[M. Arthur Auslander]

Dear tofeedonut,

A copyright only cover a mode of expresssion. If patents are involved, there may be questions of shop rights but unless there is a writing, it is likely that you own the basic rights.

[m]

The concept of "shop rights" does not exist in the UK.

It is however very likely that the student owns the copyright. If not, it would be bad PR for the university to litigate anyway. For assurance, the student should contact a department in the university (not the supervisor) that will know the rules.

[Isaac]

I didn't answer because I don't know anything about UK law.

But with respect to PR, I can assure you that at least some US universities could not care less about the bad publicity that results from suing a student.  

[nobody]

A few examples of academic copyright policy in the U.S....


"F. Students may also be subject to rules and restrictions of their units, colleges or of the Graduate School which are not inconsistent with the University Copyright Policy. For example, students who copyright their theses or dissertations must grant the University rights to reproduce and distribute copies of their works in accordance with the policies of the University or College." - http://www.research.cornell.edu/CRF/Policies/Copyright.html

"Consult with your faculty advisor and your graduate dean if you have any unusual complications in claiming ownership to your dissertation’s copyright. For example, are you actually a co-author of the dissertation with another student or faculty member? A professor who actually contributed to copyrightable elements of your dissertation might actually be deemed a co-owner of your work. Did you receive support from a foundation or the university? Some funding grants may specify the terms of ownership of resulting works. Does your university’s copyright ownership policy address dissertations? Some policies specify that the university has rights to graduate dissertations and theses. Does your dissertation reprint material that you published elsewhere? If you had earlier published portions of the dissertation as an article, for example, you may have assigned the copyright of those portions to the publisher. Carefully review your publishing agreement." - http://www.umi.com/hp/Support/DServices/copyrght/Part5.html

"Copyright ownership in a thesis or dissertation prepared by a Student toward degree requirements shall remain with the Student, provided that, unless otherwise agreed in writing, by submitting the work for credit or degree requirements, the Student shall automatically be deemed to have granted a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to the University (i) to make available for viewing to the University community through electronic or other means the entire thesis or dissertation; (ii) to make available to the broader public a limited number of copies of such thesis or dissertation, for which the University will make reasonable efforts not to reproduce and distribute in excess of ten copies per year of each such thesis or dissertation; and, (iii) to make a summary or abstract available to the University community and the public by electronic means without limitation on quantity of access or copying." - http://www.gwu.edu/~research/copyrightplcy.htm