Intellectual Property

Pittsburg State University/Kansas NEA v. Kansas Board of Regents, PSU and PERB, 280 Kan. 408 (Kan. 2005)

This case involves a challenge by the Kansas National Education Association (KNEA) to the Kansas Board of Regents’ proposed policy giving ownership of faculty intellectual property to the universities at which they work. The Kansas Supreme Court ruled that intellectual property rights are not simply assumed to be work-for-hire belonging to the university and can be a subject of collective bargaining.

Cameron v. Arizona Board of Regents, 2011 Ariz. App. Unpub. LEXIS 1129 (2011), petition for review denied, 2012 Ariz. LEXIS 220 (2012).

This case concerns Theresa Cameron, a tenured professor at Arizona State University. She was terminated after she was accused of and admitted to plagiarizing syllabi of other faculty in her own syllabi. Dr. Cameron filed suit, asking that she undergo a post-tenure review rather than termination. The AAUP filed an amicus brief in support of her petition for review, arguing that the punishment of termination was grossly disproportionate to the actions that Dr. Cameron took.

Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University, v. Roche Molecular Systems, Inc. et al., 131 S. Ct. 2188 (2011)

Petitioner Stanford University sued respondent Roche Molecular Systems, Inc. The research company responded by arguing it co-owned a patent based on a professor inventor's assignment, so the university lacked standing. This complex case has evolved into a broader battle over the patent rights of faculty members to their inventive work. 

Cambridge University Press v. Patton, 769 F.3d 1232 (11th Cir. Ga. 2014)

On October 17, 2014, The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals expounded upon the test used to determine the “fair use” exception to copyright protection. The district court initially held that faculty members’ use of certain electronic course reserves and electronic course sites to make excerpts from academic books available to students at Georgia State University (GSU) was “fair use.” AAUP submitted an amicus brief  to the Circuit Court urging it to affirm the district court’s ruling and to clarify that a “transformative use” analysis may also be used to determine “fair use.” The Circuit Court reversed the district court’s decision, agreeing with much of the district court’s fair use analysis, but not with how it applied that analysis: “The District Court did err by giving each of the four fair use factors [purpose of the new use, the nature of the original work, the amount of the work being used, and the impact on the new use on the market for the original work] equal weight, and by treating the four factors mechanistically. The District Court should have undertaken a holistic analysis which carefully balanced the four factors.”

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