lawsuit about copyright/class notes

[BCGroup]

I find this fascinating. Does a professor own the copyright to class lectures? If a student takes notes and sells them, does that violate copyright?

"University of Florida professor Michael Moulton thinks copyright law protects the lectures he gives to his students, and he's headed to court to prove it.
Moulton and his e-textbook publisher are suing Thomas Bean, who runs a company that repackages and sells student notes, arguing that the business is illegal since notes taken during college lectures violate the professor's copyright."

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...sues-note.html

[Channing]

I think I have actually heard about the guy getting sued. A friend of mine at UF said she used some service where she didnt even have to go to class. The service would package notes, and then hold lectures where they would distill the information down to the nitty gritty (i.e. condense 3 or 4 lecturs into 1 lecture)

[allenmurray]

The five minute university.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO8x8eoU3L4

[willywoody]

I think I have actually heard about the guy getting sued. A friend of mine at UF said she used some service where she didnt even have to go to class. The service would package notes, and then hold lectures where they would distill the information down to the nitty gritty (i.e. condense 3 or 4 lecturs into 1 lecture)

very popular service at my grad school. i subscribed but rarely referred to the notes as i usually attended classes but some students relied heavily on the subscription service. usually these kinds of services are cleared with the profs up front though.

[ArkieDukie]

My opinion on this matter is shaded a bit by personal experience. After being denied tenure, I accepted a position elsewhere. The person who was hired to replace me got copies of my class materials from former students and used them to teach my old classes. It took me several years to tweak the course materials, so it really torqued me that he was given the benefit of my 6 years of work. I was told that my course materials were the intellectual property of the school since I worked for them when I prepared them. To all you lawyers out there, does that sound right?

A couple of years later, I found out that yet another faculty member who came in after I left was using my lecture notes. I was quite angry for a while, but then I decided that maybe I should feel sorry for an academic institution that hired people who were incapable of preparing their own lecture notes.

[Pacer]

As a rule, if you are a W-2 employee, any IP created that is directly related to your job is the property of the employer.

The employer can also get rights to IP created that is not related to the job if you use your employer's resources for its creation...

Contract employees open a different set of considerations.

Regardless, your situation appears to fit in my first paragraph. Clearly frustrating for you, but correct.

[BCGroup]

Also, does the university have a clear IP policy? Mine does, and it's very specific about course development (mainly related to online course development). It spells out what you can take with you when you leave and what belongs to the university. I found the original piece interesting mainly due to the fact that I would differentiate between a course pack vs. my lecture in class. I don't really have/use lecture notes; I teach all graduate courses, and although I have core content, my students say the key material is in the real life examples. They also tend not to miss, since they say using someone else's notes doesn't make up for the content. I know I'm a little spoiled--grad students who are working full time and coming to school part time and paying their own tuition seem to take it a bit more seriously.

[ArkieDukie]

It wasn't only lecture notes - it was a lab book. I actually developed some new experiments and adapted others. The lazy slob used my entire lab curriculum - and syllabus, for that matter. My syllabus was set up in such a way as to cover material in lab that was being covered in lecture. Where there wasn't an experiment, I developed one. The students were given an Excel spreadsheet with reading assignments from the textbook for every single lecture, with a separate column for lab assignments. Dude then got my lecture notes, tests, and quizzes from former students.

Back to the other topic, I would say that canned lecture notes are a whole other ball of wax. If a student is lazy enough to pay someone else to take lecture notes for them, more power to them. Personally, I wouldn't trust someone else to write down everything I felt like I needed to know to perform well on a test. A student willing to pay for canned notes, and rely solely on them, is also a student who is not likely to be at the top of the class. JMO