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US flag Who owns what?

Joint authorship and collaboration

Other issues arise because of collaboration. The more creators there are, the more complicated it becomes to figure out who owns what, especially when creating online materials.These situations involve:

  • Inter-institutional collaborators or other non-affiliated collaborators
  • Student contributions
  • Contract labor contributions
  • Non-faculty University employee contribution

In order to be joint authors of a work, each person must:

  • Contribute copyrightable expression and
  • Intend at the time the work is created that all contributors will be joint owners of the whole finished work
  • The best way to sort out joint ownership is through discussion and agreement at the start of a project. For example, a blog and its commentary present potential joint contributors with opportunities to create collaborative works. The blog owners could indicate from the start that all contributions are individually owned, no joint work is intended, but all contributions will be publicly licensed under a Creative Commons license that permits the creation of derivative works. This would allow all contributors to use their own and others' contributions in other works. These can be further refined as commercial or non-commercial. 

Finally, some issues arise because institutional resources are scarce and must be allocated wisely and recovered when possible. So, even if an institution is not an owner of a work under the work-for-hire rules, it may have an interest in acquiring rights or recovering its investment in a work created with significant amounts or kinds of institutional resources. If such a work is commercialized, the institution may even wish to share in the royalties. All of these rights should be addressed in a contract.