legal words
Who Owns the Employer’s
Intellectual Property?
COPYRIGHT AND PATENT OWNERSHIP BECOMES MORE AMBIGUOUS IN
TODAY’S FLEXIBLE WORLD OF WORK
If employers are concerned about protecting their intellectual
property, they should be aware of certain intellectual proper-ty
ownership laws that govern ownership. While intellectual
property covers a broad range of subject matter, the areas that
are most commonly seen in the heart of employer-employee dis-putes
are patents and copyrights, and to make matters interesting,
the laws that govern ownership when it comes to patents and copy-right
vary. As such, it is important for employers and businesses to
be aware of such distinctions before entering into an employment
agreement with a potential employee to avoid ownership disputes
down the road.
Copyright is the exclusive legal right to produce, reproduce,
publish or perform an original “work.” The term “work” includes
an artistic, musical or dramatic work; source codes in relation to
technology, website content, user interfaces, logos and more. Given
the broad spectrum of what is considered a “work,” copyright own-ership
disputes are inevitable in employer-employee relationships.
The Copyright Act specifically addresses ownership rules in the
employer-employee context. Under Section 13(1), it states that
the author of a work is the first owner of copyright in the work.
Despite this general rule, Section 13(3) of the Copyright Act pro-vides
that where a “work” is created in the course of employment,
By Donya Vahidi
niroworld / Shutterstock.com
HRPROFESSIONALNOW.CA ❚ NOVEMBER 2017 ❚ 13
/HRPROFESSIONALNOW.CA
