Intellectual property can be described as the mind’s creations, for instance, inventions; designs; artistic and literary works; as well as symbols, images and names utilized in commerce. Intellectual property is safeguarded in act through, for instance, copyright, trademarks, and patents, which allow individuals to receive monetary benefit or recognition from what they create or invent. Intellectual property system is intended to nurture an atmosphere wherein innovation and creativity can flourish (Bently & Sherman, 2014).
Volunteers serve crucially significant functions in most not-for-profit organizations. What ensues once volunteers generate creative works for their societies? By and large, the volunteers will possess the works without any definite arrangements. Thus, not-for-profits organizations must take a proactive measure concerning copyright matters, for instance via ownership and licensing contracts. These steps might come to be particularly vital when the produced works afterwards turn out to be monetarily valuable, if disagreements come up about the work, or if the organization desires to alter or transfer the work. For instance, a founder may create an application or another software app that will be utilized to carry out the charitable programs for the organization. In this case, it might be rather beneficial to positively address the ensuing copyright matters, to make clear the not-for-profit’s ownership interests, to take care of further arrangements, and to evade future uninvited disputes.
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The Copyright Act refers to a federal act which safeguards creators or authors of the creative work once they set an original thought in a “concrete form of expression” (Ku, 2017). The exceptional rights to the creative work, called the copyright, are spontaneously issued after the work is set in a concrete form of manifestation. However, the Copyright Act offers two exemptions to these rights laws. Firstly, the employer is given the copyright in the work fixed by a worker during employment. Secondly, under extremely limited circumstances, the law will give the copyright in the work to somebody who commissions the work to be produced by an autonomous servicer, on condition that the parties approve in writing to that kind of arrangement. Nonetheless, the two exceptions do not relate to volunteers. Therefore, when a volunteer produces an original work for the not-for-profit organization, the Copyright Act grants special ownership to a volunteer.
Considering these deliberations, not-for-profits may take measure to obtain ownership of the rights in a work which will be utilized by the organization. To begin with, the organization may determine to what level, and when volunteers would be generating creative works for an organization. Secondly, an organization may determine the works and the detailed rights which the group will require to use such works. In most circumstances, getting the possessor’s non-exclusive authorization, or certificate, to utilize the work could be all that an organization requires. For legitimate enforceability, such authorization must be in writing. However, in other cases, an organization might desire to necessitate the full ownership or exclusive license of a copyright to be reassigned. A proactive method to ascertaining both the volunteer’s and the nonprofit’s interests and needs under the present and longstanding circumstances are crucial for optimum legal protection.
Lastly, to thoroughly address the copyright issues, an organization might desire to establish a system to list and monitor its copyright welfares in different works, counting dates the work was made. Such tactic ought to help future leaders to speedily distinguish which work the organization possesses and has documented and which work has been licensed. The system would also allow an organization to track the length of its copyright welfares that are restricted under the federal act and habitually condensed by licensing contracts. Lastly, such a system would help an organization in monitoring and guarding against prospective violations of the work.
References
Bently, L., & Sherman, B. (2014). Intellectual property law . Oxford University Press, USA.
Ku, R. S. R. (2017). The creative destruction of copyright: Napster and the new economics of digital technology. In Copyright Law (pp. 207-268). New York: Routledge.
