Workers in the “Groves of Academe”: The Claim of Academics to Copyright and Patents

Abstract

This chapter weighs the claim of university academics to control over works and inventions produced as a part of their work in teaching and research. It does so relying on the most commonly advanced justifications for the intellectual property (IP) regimes. It is the contention here that while an academic has a strong claim to prima facie ownership of copyright in works produced in the course of her university teaching and research (albeit a form of copyright potentially limited in one important respect), her claim to the ownership of patent rights, and to copyright in computer programs, is very much weaker.