Re: Rights in early RFCs

[Joe Touch <[e-mail]>]

> On Jun 15, 2019, at 10:53 PM, Michael StJohns <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> 
> On 6/14/2019 10:22 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>> On 15-Jun-19 12:38, Joe Touch wrote:
>>> FWIW, IANAL but the agreements below affect only the editing and publication functions of ISI during the period indicated, which (AFAICT) was after Jon died.
>> No, pre-October 1998 is specifically included in the first one. The two are slightly different for reasons that various lawyers no doubt explained at the time.
>>  
>>> I.e, this refers to the RFC Editor contributions. It does not appear (again, IANAL) to affect either previous works or even RFC work done by others during that period (granted that the ISOC started adding copyright statements to RFCs somewhere in that time too).
>> It applies to all rights that ISI *might have had*, which is all they could offer. It doesn't apply to any rights that third parties might have had, obviously. So it is the maximum that ISI could offer, which is all we could ask for. (IANAL, but I was in the discussion loop with the Trust's lawyer.)
> FWIW, RFC768 would have been considered a work-for-hire by Jon on behalf of ISI, and ISI could then grant the rights wherever they wanted that wasn't inconsistent with the contract between ISI and the US Government that covered Jon's work.

That may - or may not - be true for Jon, but he was staff at the time.

It’s useful to note that this would not affect *faculty* at USC (other faculty elsewhere might have the same privileges); at USC, they have always been given rights to their research, except only when it is specifically identified as a product of a contract, in specific exception to “work for hire” copyright. There are also other workarounds - e.g., hiring someone to write a book is work for hire; hiring them to investigate a topic and submit periodic progress reports - and having them write the book based on that research but on their own time - is not. And those two cases aren’t hypothetical; IANAL but they are based on direct experience at USC with the appropriate experts, FWIW.

Joe