Collaborative Research: Conflicts on Authorship, Ownership, and Accountability
2000; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 53; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0042-2533
Autores Tópico(s)Intellectual Property and Patents
ResumoRochelle Cooper Dreyfuss 53 Vand. L. Rev. 1161 (2000) In this Article, Professor Dreyfuss explores the field of collaborative research in the realm of intellectual property law. Traditionally, scientists, artists, and professors developed ideas alone, utilizing only their own knowledge and research to complete their works. Recently, however, due in part to an increasing need for specialization, the globalization of the marketplace, the rapid growth of the Internet, and an expansion in intellectual property law, collaborative production is replacing individual efforts. Collaborative efforts have posed an array of new and challenging legal problems. Parties sometimes find themselves without a clear sense of who has rights to royalties, who can make binding decisions regarding publication or commercial exploits, or who has legal authority to build upon the work and make improvements. Additionally, collaborators may lose access to materials necessary to further future research, or discover that their contributions are not acknowledged when the work is published. In dealing with these problems, two schools of thought have emerged. Economists, using a Coasian intuition, theorize that voluntary associations for the express purpose of producing output should lead to private allocations of accompanying intellectual property rights. Accordingly, advocates of this theory posit that legal intervention is undesirable, because parties are best positioned to make their own decisions regarding joint ventures. On the other hand, based upon their experiences watching intellectual property problems emerge over time, many attorneys believe that increasing legal intervention is necessary. This Article proposes a series of legal rules that utilize both intellectual property law's concepts of authorship and inventorship and Coasian ideas of transactional freedom. These rules provide a benchmark for collaborative parties, thereby assisting them in identifying issues and structuring workable arrangements. Professor Dreyfuss's proposal would also save collaborators' valuable time and resources by serving as a set of default rules. Finally, these rules, if adopted, would help courts interpret collaborative agreements an a way that best reflects the parties' intent. They gave me the list. I asked these questions. The producers took the tape and I was gone. I was the face. -Peter Arnett, CNN, describing his role is reporting on Operation Tailwind.l The artist, starving in a garret; the dedicated scientist, experimenting in a garage; the reclusive professor, burning midnight oil in the office-these are becoming endangered species. The creative industries have evolved: collaborative production is replacing individual effort. Works of the new order are exemplified by the likes of NewStand, the television news magazine produced by teaming the cable station CNN with Time Magazine;2 by Rent, a play created by Jonathan Larson with the help of the dramaturg, Lynn Thomson;3 by learning initiatives at many universities,4 and most especially, by the multi-authored articles now common in scientific journals.5 The reasons for this evolution are manifold. In large part, it is a consequence of intellectual limitations. In many fields-biotechnology is one example-the intensity of specialization makes it nearly impossible for any one researcher to know enough to work alone; interdisciplinary investigation is essential if the frontiers of knowledge are to be pushed forward. The globalization of the marketplace has also had an influence, for in that environment, multinational input is needed to produce goods that appeal across a broad range of cultures. Advances in the tools of creativity account for yet another part of the change. Most obviously, the growth of the Internet has made long distance collaborations much easier. More subtly, the web, when coupled with advances in scanning and digitizing technologies, has created new artistic forms, such as chain novels and chain artwhat might be called sequential collaboration. …
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