Not counting course-assigned materials, have you picked up any great books written by an MSU faculty member lately? Have you purchased any great CDs by one?
Not likely, because these faculty members might have been afraid copyright privileges to those works would be claimed by the university.
MSU is the only learning institution of its sort of to have a copyright policy that takes ownership away from creators. Faculty are not given the rights afforded to their contemporaries at other major universities. Taken from them is the ability to own their creations of music, writing or other properties not typically requiring heavy university funding.
This strange and alarming policy has drawn the signatures of 150 faculty in two colleges, who are concerned that the university's policy is a big mistake.
For some reason, the private works of professors fall under the same jurisdiction as those created on the university's dime in for-hire projects. Original creations are first owned by MSU and then, at some point, they can choose to pass ownership back to the creator.
That doesn't sound right. Luckily, university administrators support a change. They say the ownership controversy is a purely accidental effect of the approach MSU takes. MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon said the current policy, amended in 2001, didn't intend to pile all copyright law into one category. She said she would support a change of this policy with the MSU Board of Trustees.
The freedom of faculty to have ownership and control over their own creations at this university shouldn't have ever been in question in the first place. The fact that the policy could accidentally end up giving the university ownership of anything created by its staff is a big thing to overlook.
It is unclear why MSU would want to do that. True, the university would stand to make quite a bit of money, should one of the works prove successful, but MSU already generates millions of dollars in royalties each year from the hundreds of patents it holds.
Envision a tricky legal battle with the fine print of a creator's contract being brought into speculation. Somehow, the person didn't see that their personal creation was owned by the university simply because they are an employee.
The university does have a clearer definition on how work-for-hire, not personal, projects are conducted. MSU spends hundreds of millions of dollars on research each year. When researchers sign on to use university resources to conduct their work - typically in the science and medical fields - there are contracts involved that sign ownership to MSU. The university is clear-cut regarding ownership of projects that could likely have a big impact on the world.
Let's hope MSU officials follow through by changing the language of this policy and grant freedom to MSU's finest academic minds to create without losing ownership of their creations.
