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Full-Text Articles in Law
Work Made For Hire – Analyzing The Multifactor Balancing Test, Ryan G. Vacca
Work Made For Hire – Analyzing The Multifactor Balancing Test, Ryan G. Vacca
Akron Law Faculty Publications
Authorship, and hence, initial ownership of copyrighted works is oftentimes controlled by the 1976 Copyright Act’s work made for hire doctrine. This doctrine states that works created by employees within the scope of their employment result in the employer owning the copyright. One key determination in this analysis is whether the hired party is an employee or independent contractor. In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court, in CCNV v. Reid, answered the question of how employees are distinguished from independent contractors by setting forth a list of factors courts should consider. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court did not give further guidance on …
Work Made For Hire – Analyzing The Multifactor Balancing Test, Ryan G. Vacca
Work Made For Hire – Analyzing The Multifactor Balancing Test, Ryan G. Vacca
Ryan G. Vacca
Authorship, and hence, initial ownership of copyrighted works is oftentimes controlled by the 1976 Copyright Act’s work made for hire doctrine. This doctrine states that works created by employees within the scope of their employment result in the employer owning the copyright. One key determination in this analysis is whether the hired party is an employee or independent contractor. In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court, in CCNV v. Reid, answered the question of how employees are distinguished from independent contractors by setting forth a list of factors courts should consider. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court did not give further guidance on …
Work Made For Hire – Analyzing The Multifactor Balancing Test, Ryan G. Vacca
Work Made For Hire – Analyzing The Multifactor Balancing Test, Ryan G. Vacca
Law Faculty Scholarship
Authorship, and hence, initial ownership of copyrighted works is oftentimes controlled by the 1976 Copyright Act’s work made for hire doctrine. This doctrine states that works created by employees within the scope of their employment result in the employer owning the copyright. One key determination in this analysis is whether the hired party is an employee or independent contractor. In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court, in CCNV v. Reid, answered the question of how employees are distinguished from independent contractors by setting forth a list of factors courts should consider. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court did not give further guidance on …
Hired To Invent Vs. Work Made For Hire: Resolving The Inconsistency Among Rights Of Corporate Personhood, Authorship, And Inventorship, Sean M. O'Connor
Hired To Invent Vs. Work Made For Hire: Resolving The Inconsistency Among Rights Of Corporate Personhood, Authorship, And Inventorship, Sean M. O'Connor
Seattle University Law Review
Corporations have long held core aspects of legal personhood, such as rights to own and divest property and to sue and be sued. U.S. copyright law allows corporations to be authors while U.S. patent law does not allow them to be inventors. To be sure, both copyright law and patent law allow corporations to own copyrights and patents as assignees. But only copyright law, through its work-made-for-hire doctrine, provides for the nonnatural person of the corporation to “be” the author in an almost metaphysical sense. Under patent law, the natural-person inventors must always be listed in the patent documents, even …
On Virtual Worlds: Copyright And Contract At The Dawn Of The Virtual Age, Erez Reuveni
On Virtual Worlds: Copyright And Contract At The Dawn Of The Virtual Age, Erez Reuveni
Erez Reuveni
This Article argues that copyright law can and should apply to artistic and literary creations occurring entirely in virtual worlds. First, the Article introduces the concept of virtual worlds as places millions of people visit not only for entertainment but also for life and work. Second, the Article reviews the philosophical justifications for copyright, examines objections to applying copyright to virtual, rather than real, creative works, and concludes that neither precludes copyright for virtual creations. Third, the Article articulates how copyright law would function within virtual spaces and reviews copyrightable creations from the perspective of both game developers and players. …
Authorship In The Age Of The Conducer, Erez Reuveni
Authorship In The Age Of The Conducer, Erez Reuveni
Erez Reuveni
The age of centralized information production is over. Today, countless creative enterprises involve decentralized collaboration by hundreds of end-users. Yet, the Copyright Act's last major revision occurred over thirty years ago, when a centralized, corporate model of production was the primary means of delivering information products on a mass-market scale. This Article contends that several features of the Copyright Act, remnants of this earlier corporate-driven era, are outmoded and fail to offer optimal incentives for the decentralized, non-profit-driven model of creative production utilized by many in the software and information-production fields. Specifically, the Copyright Act assumes creativity stems from the …