5.6 Intellectual Property: Ownership, Access, Rights, and Management.

To copy or reproduce an entire work without authorization from the copyright owner constitutes copyright infringement. However, a reasonable type and amount of copying of a copyrighted work is permitted under the fair use provisions of US copyright law.(§107)What constitutes fair use of copyrighted material in a given case depends on the following 4 factors(§107): 1. Purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes2. Nature of the copyrighted work3. Amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole4. Effect of ...Less

Typically, copyright of a work vests initially with the author of the work. As copyright owner, an author may transfer rights to a publisher by copyright assignment, exclusive license, or nonexclusive license., A broadly worded exclusive license may provide much of the same rights to publishers as would a copyright transfer agreement. Thus, an owner of an exclusive assignment (through either copyright transfer or broadly worded exclusive license) may produce derivative works and sublicense specific rights to others. Some publishers permit authors to retain certain rights to their works, even when assigning copyright or granting an exclusive license (such as ...Less

Although use of a copyright notice is not required under copyright law, the US Copyright Office strongly recommends use of such a notice. A copyright notice for all visual copies of a work should contain the following 3 elements(§401): The word “Copyright,” or abbreviation “Copr,” or the symbol ©, The year of first publication of the work, and The name of the copyright owner Example: Copyright 2007 American Medical AssociationNote: For JAMA and the Archives Journals, the wording above includes the name of the owner of the journals (American Medical Association), not the name of the journal. It is recommended ...Less

Additional information about copyright law may be obtained from several sources. For a detailed legal account, consult Perle and Williams on Publishing Law or Nimmer on Copyright (although these resources are expensive and may be best consulted via a library that has these in its holdings). Other useful texts include The Chicago Manual of Style chapter “Rights and Permissions” and Law of the Web: A Field Guide to Internet Publishing. Specific information, useful guides, and forms may be obtained free of charge from the US Copyright Office,,,,,,: US Copyright OfficeLibrary of Congress101 Independence Ave SEWashington, DC 20559-6000Telephone: (202) 707-3000www.copyright.govAdditional useful ...Less

Copyright is a term used to describe the legal right of authors to control the communication and reproduction of their original works of authorship., Thus, copyright law provides for the protection of rights of parties involved in the creation and dissemination of intellectual property. While a variety of people and entities derive benefits from copyright laws (authors, publishers, editors, composers, artists, and the producers of television and radio programs, films, sound recordings, video, computer programs, and software), few thoroughly understand the law and its basic applications. This section discusses current copyright laws and applications in scientific publishing. Copyright laws, scope, ...Less

[Will copyright survive the new technologies?] Thatquestion is about as bootless as asking whether pol-itics will survive democracy. The real question iswhat steps it will take to ensure that the promisednew era of information and entertainment survivescopyright. History offers a clue.    Paul GoldsteinIntellectual property is a legal term for that which results from the creative efforts of the mind (intellectual) and that which can be owned, possessed, and subject to competing claims (property). Three legal doctrines governing intellectual property are relevant for authors, editors, and publishers in biomedical publishing: copyright (the law protecting authorship and publication), patent (the law protecting invention ...Less

There is no international copyright law. Copyright law, scope, protections, and remedies are governed by individual nations and treaties between them. Thus, copyright laws do not automatically protect an author’s work throughout the world. However, most countries offer protection to works from other nations. For a detailed discussion of the copyright laws of individual countries, consult WIPO (which is under the auspices of the United Nations) in Geneva, Switzerland. See , Copyright Resources, for contact information for WIPO.The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (commonly known as the Berne Convention) was originally signed by 10 European ...Less

Moral rights, first introduced by the French as droit moral, is a doctrine of copyright law intended to protect individual creators' noneconomic investments in their work and the personality of the creator as it relates to the work regardless of copyright ownership or transfer.(§26.01), Two moral rights that are most often recognized are the right to attribution and right to integrity (ie, right to prevent destruction or mutilation of work).(§26.01) This doctrine is endorsed by most member countries of the Berne Convention. Although the United States is a member of the Berne Convention, US law does not provide for moral ...Less

The open-access movement began in the late 1990s following the proliferation of online journals available via the Internet (versions of print journals and journals published only online), the inability of declining library budgets to keep pace with increases in the numbers of journals and rising subscription prices, and demands to reduce the information gap between developed and developing countries. Broadly defined, open access is the free and unrestricted online availability of content. (In the context of biomedical publication, this refers primarily to research articles.) Strictly applied, open-access publishing means that users can freely read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or ...Less

Conceptual application of the term property to scientific knowledge is not new, but advances in science and technology and economic factors have fueled disputes and concerns over ownership, control, and access to original data. Data used in biomedical research, increasingly complex, now include large data sets, software, algorithms, and metadata (data that provide information or characteristics about other data). With the exception of commercially owned information, scientific data are viewed as a public good, allowing others to benefit from knowledge of and access to the information without decreasing the benefit received by the individual who originally developed the data. Ideally, ...Less