Can college and university teachers take their course materials, presentations, notes, slides, PowerPoints, syllabi and other teaching resources with them when they leave their current positions? Can they sell or license these materials to online universities or market them through Amazon?
For a group that tends to dispute everything even a position that would presumably only side in their own interest, academics too must conced the legal ambiguity of the copyright law’s “work for hire” doctrine when applied to the academic setting. What probably not in dispute is, as one commentator describes it, that “Traditionally, it was presumed that educators owned copyrights to academic work they have authored or created.”
