Meetings Law: Copyrighting Conference Content

D. Benson Tesdahl, mimegasite.com, 3/20/2007 (Originally published 3/1/2007)

Knowing, at all times, who owns the copyright to content and who has permission to use that content is especially important for organizations that solicit proposals or receive unsolicited written speeches, educational outlines, or other materials for upcoming conferences from people hoping to get selected as conference speakers.

As a general rule, the person who creates an original written work product has a copyright interest in that work at the moment of creation, and that copyright interest includes the exclusive right to reproduce or sell that work and to grant to others the right to use the work. The authors of a joint work are generally co-owners of the copyright to that work, unless there is an agreement to the contrary.

One exception is where you have a "work made for hire," by an employee, contractor, or sometimes even an unpaid volunteer. In this case, the entity that has paid for or commissioned the work owns the copyright in and controls the use of the work product.

Who Owns Submissions for a Conference?

This brings us to the sticky question of who owns the copyright in a proposal, a speech, or some other written product at the moment it is received by an organization for consideration to use in its next conference. If the item is accepted, or if the item is further modified by the recipient organization, does copyright ownership change? Does permission to print a written speech also include permission to record and sell that speech? If volunteer committee members create written materials that are used in the conference, to whom does the copyright to those materials belong? And if submitted written material is completely rejected for inclusion in the conference, can the recipient organization nevertheless use the materials or the ideas for some future purpose of its own?

As with most legal questions, the answer to all of the foregoing questions is "it depends." Specifically, the outcome depends upon whether the organization soliciting and receiving the materials has clear written policies and agreements in place with those submitting materials. Surprisingly, many organizations operate with no submission guidelines at all or with copyright ownership and use agreements that are extremely vague and sometimes even internally contradictory.

Solving the Problem

Generally, there are two very broad approaches to consider. One approach, which some find a little heavy-handed, is to draft an agreement providing that the author must sign over all copyright interests to the receiving organization, with the author receiving only name recognition during the conference. The other approach is to draft an agreement providing that copyright ownership stays in the hands of the author but that the author must sign a document granting the organization a very broad royalty-free "license" to use the materials for certain specified purposes during the conference. This latter approach allows the author to publish the materials in other forums, which may sometimes compete with the conference unless restrictions are put in place.

A harder problem is what to do about solicited material that is rejected by the receiving organization, but that contains some good ideas or nuggets of useful information that the organization might be able to build upon and use in a future conference. One reasonably fair approach is to draft a policy that puts people on notice that the copyright ownership of rejected proposals and other materials stays with the author and will not be used by the organization without the author's consent, but that once written materials are accepted by the organization, the author will be required to sign some type of further copyright transfer or licensing agreement with the receiving organization.

It is critical to have clear copyright ownership agreements and to review them with a sharp eye, because they may well be ambiguous or unworkable, especially if they were drafted long ago by lay staff members without copyright expertise.