APG-L Archives

From: <>
Subject: [APG] Re: Rights to a Professional's Work Product
Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2000 15:08:52 EST

When we are working as independent contractors, as most of us are, our work
product and the copyright to the literary form in which we express it is
initially ours. The client acquires only those rights we specifically agree
to transfer. If we produce work as employees (where the employer withholds
taxes from our compensation and makes FICA contributions), copyright belongs
to the employer and rights to other use of our work product is subject to the
employer's policy and rules.

A "work made for hire" (a term with specific meaning under the copyright law)
is one made by an employee in the course of employment, or one specially
commissioned from an independent contractor when there is a written agreement
between the parties to treat the work as one "made for hire," which allows
whoever commissioned it to register and own the copyright.

As professionals, our principal concerns, which should be addressed in our
written agreements with clients to prevent future misunderstandings, are (1)
how much we give up our right to make further use of our own work-product,
either for future publication or on behalf of other clients, (2) requiring a
clear distinction between work attributed to us and that of others in any use
of our work made by the client, and (3) preserving the integrity of our work,
to include both our source citations and the reservations or conditions
surrounding our conclusions, in any publication of our work or or private
sharing of it with others. How and to what extent we need to protect those
interests depends primarily on how the client plans to use our work.

Many long-time professionals in this field have traditionally worked from an
ethic that treated the client relationship as completely confidential and
where the right to all research products belonged to the client, unless the
client agreed otherwise. This standard, however, ignores our responsibility
to scholarship and to the profession to make known errors discovered in
previously published work or in original sources, whatever the client may
wish, and goes far beyond any legal standard regarding rights to an
independent contractor's work-product, unless there is some agreement
restricting those rights.

Although in the absence of an agreement we have a right to do so, most of us
rightly feel uncomfortable about providing the results of extensive research
commissioned by someone else to another client, even if we only charge for
the time needed to prepare the new report. The approach I use in my own
client agreements, unless the client desires otherwise, is to refer the
prospective client to the former one for information on any already completed
research.

Donn Devine, CG, CGI
2004 Kentmere Pkwy, Wilmington DE 19806-2014, USA
Phone 302/656-7233 FAX 302/656-0315

CG, Certified Genealogist, CGI, and Certified Genealogical Instructor are
service marks of the Board for Certification of Genealogists, used under
license by board-certified associates after periodic competency evaluations.

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