The University owns the copyright and works produced pursuant to specific assignments or specific duties that are not connected with normal teaching, scholarship, research or artistic endeavors. The authoring of catalogue or promotional materials is an example of such an assignment.
The University owns the copyright for works created as special projects.
When a faculty member agrees to the University's request to have his or her lectures videotaped for off-campus broadcast or to have them broadcast live via University telecommunications facilities, the programs will be jointly owned and copyrighted by the faculty member and the University.
The University owns works developed in the course of assigned duties or developed wholly or significantly through the use of general funds.
B. The faculty author of a work, the ownership of which is retained by the University, shall warrant to the University that the work is original and that to the best of his or her knowledge the work does not infringe on any copyrights of others, does not contain libelous matter, and does not contain any material improperly invading the privacy of others.
B. Board means the Board of Visitors of George Mason University.
C. Commercialization means sales of copyrights and contracts with outside agencies providing for royalties or other lease arrangements based on copyrights.
D. Faculty has the same meaning as in the current George Mason University Faculty Handbook. For the purpose of this policy statement, administrative faculty are considered "staff" when they are fulfilling their administrative roles and "faculty" when they are carrying out their duties as regular faculty members.
E. President means the President of George Mason University.
F. Proceeds means the net remaining after deduction of unreimbursed development costs incurred and the expenses of marketing, including cost of advertising, sales, distribution, and related overhead costs.
G. Special Projects are activities to which the University makes a substantial contribution of funds, personnel, facilities, services, or reduction of workload to the author. What constitutes a "substantial contribution" for purposes of this definition must be decided on a case by case basis. These are frequently, but not always, similar to projects supported by outside sponsors, who from time to time include in their grants or contracts, terms that claim ownership of the copyright by the sponsor or require publication without copyright. The University will retain an interest in any copyrightable work produced by a Faculty member, staff member or student under contract with a third party if the University makes a substantial contribution notwithstanding any contract terms to the contrary. Funds and facilities provided by outside sponsors which are administered and controlled by the University shall be considered to be "funds" and "facilities" contributed by the University for the purposes of this definition.
Special projects will be frequently, but not always, characterized by released time to the author or authors, by the substantial use of University facilities, and/or by the contribution of University employees other than clerk and secretarial employees. Examples of such substantial University contributions are the use of one or several University employees in the preparation or validation of teaching or testing materials, the participation of University employees as researchers on a project, and a University-sponsored conference which is funded by the University with the participants being paid for or contributing their papers or presentations and a faculty member compiling and editing the proceedings.
H. Staff means all employees of the University other than faculty.
I. Work or works are those products for which copyright protection is provided by the Federal Copyright Act of 1976. This statute covers "original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced or otherwise communicated." Copyright protection does not "extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery...described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work." Works may be literary, dramatic, musical, choreographic, artistic, scientific, and so forth. They may be fixed in the form of writing, drawing, maps, photographs, paintings, sculptures, motion pictures, sound recordings, and so forth.
J. University means George Mason University.
K. Assigned Duty is narrower than "scope of employment," and is an undertaking of a task or project as a result of a specific request or direction. A general obligation to do research, even if it results in a specific end product such as a vaccine, a published article, or a computer program, or to produce scholarly publications, is not a specific request or direction and hence is not an assigned duty. In contrast, an obligation to develop a particular vaccine or write a particular article or produce a particular computer program is a specific request or direction and is therefore an assigned duty.
L. Significant Use of General Funds and the phrase "developed wholly or significantly through the use of general funds," mean that general funds provided over half of the identifiable resources used to develop a particular intellectual property, and exceeded $10,000.00. A reasonable cost should be assigned to those resources for which a cost figure is not readily available, such as salary, support staff, and other equipment and resources dedicated to the creator's efforts. Resources such as libraries that are available to employees generally should not be counted in the assessment of the use of general funds.
7/30/87
The Committee's duties will include:
A. To recommend whether the University has a proprietary interest in a faculty-authored work, and, if so, to what extent, should the faculty authors and the Vice Provost disagree;
B. To recommend the relative shares in the work of faculty co-authors, should the faculty co-authors and the Vice Provost disagree;
C. To recommend whether to apply for a copyright and/or market the work, should the faculty authors and the Vice Provost disagree;
D. To make recommendations on matters of obsolescence as provided in Section VII, below, should the faculty authors and the Vice Provost disagree; and
E. To make recommendations on all matters pertaining to copyright not resolved by this procedure statement and to recommend modifications of the Copyright Policy that may be appropriate.
A. The first $1,000 of proceeds to the author;
B. Half of the proceeds above $1,000 to the author and the other half to the University.
If more than one faculty member is an author of a work or a part thereof, the share of proceeds which this paragraph allocates to the author will be shared among such co-authors as they shall determine.
In cases where the University incurs litigation costs in defending the copyright against infringement, such costs will be deducted from income before any royalties are distributed. If such costs are incurred after the distribution of royalties have commenced, the author will be held harmless for any royalties already received.
If the University fails to make progress toward obtaining a copyright (and marketing such copyright) of a faculty-authored work owned by the University within a period of 18 months, the faculty member may formally make a written request to the University Intellectual Property Committee, that the ownership of the materials pass to the author.
Faculty-authored works owned by the University may be reviewed by the author after five years for obsolescence. If he considers the materials to be obsolete, he has the right to refer the matter to the Vice Provost, with recommendation for disposal of the material.
8/23/89