I dug something up which I wrote in Grade 11, and I’d like to publish it as an ebook, as a curiosity. I will of course contact the school, but I am wondering, how does this work in general?
When I was at Sheridan College studying animation, I remember signing a paper that explicitly granted copyright in our assignments to the school, and indeed many of the previous years’ assignments were available in the library, but would that hold for a high school?
As a general rule, you own the copyright. If you didn’t sign anything, it’s yours. Some schools have a policy allowing them to republish student works, but I don’t see how that is enforceable. E.g., the SDMB can republish stuff but it’s our choice whether to post something here or not and we are implicity giving them that right by posting. A required school assignment is not exactly a choice.
OTOH, the animation class, you are presumably using school equipment and software to produce it, so they have “invested” in your creation and they will of course be more interested in controlling distribution. So no doubt that’s a big part of why they had you sign something.
For a story/book/essay, there is no explicit reason for a school to assume you used school resources to produce it so their financial interest in it is weak.
Note, that for companies and employee works, they have you sign something giving them copyright/patent rights to everything you produce for them, on company time, or using company resources (and in some cases even on your own). If a company thought that what employees produced for them was automatically theirs, such agreements wouldn’t be necessary. A school is in an even weaker position.
Has there ever been an actual legal case where the court was confronted with this question? E.g. “North Lake Unified School District v. J. Jimmy Alumnus” where Mr. Alumnus had actually profited from selling copies of essays, short stories, or other stuff he wrote in high school and the school system screamed for it’s cut?
The author, unless he has explicitly agreed otherwise.
Of course, this is assuming it’s not one of those assignments where significant portions are already written for you. If you are filling out a worksheet, the pre-existing language doesn’t suddenly become your property just because you wrote on it. Things like numerical math problems probably wouldn’t be copyrightable, but word problems? Essay prompts? Those still belong to the creator.
I mean, imagine if all a teacher had to do was fill out a worksheet, and then he could copy out the problems himself. He’d never have to buy a workbook again.
Nope. This is a story with illustrations all done by me, taking place in a fictional world I’d designed in Grade 10. 
I just sent the school a message. We’ll get some sort of answer in the next few days, I hope.
I would agree with ftg. This issue is important when it come to university level work, and especially PhD research, where it is quite possible that valuable IP can be generated. So it does get seriously looked at. Where I taught it was quite clear that any creative work done as an undergraduate belonged wholly to the creator, and the university had no claim. Even PhD research belongs to the student. But it becomes very tricky if a scholarship is involved. A scholarship can be seen as being paid, and at that point IP may be considered to belong to the “employer”. The precise nature of the scholarship becomes important. Universities will often require a PhD student to sign over the IP, or enter into some agreement about potential IP as a condition of enrolment. That gets them some start at a share if something valuable comes out. Otherwise they get nothing.
This is different to the assignment of a right to use, which is what happens with web content, including what we write here on SDMB.
Since we are talking about high school, can a minor actually sign over his/her rights?
Hmm. Grade 11. I was 15. Yep, still a minor. I have vague impressions that at 16, I could start signing contracts, etc, on my own. The flood of paperwork didn’t start till university at age 18 though. I could definitely sign things then. Though I remember my parents had to cosign for some things.
For that matter, can a minor claim copyright, or would their parent have to do this?
Also, what jurisdiction is this in? I don’t know where “Back in the GT eeehhhh…” is, but by repeated use of “Grade 11” rather than “11th Grade” I assume it’s somewhere other than the US, which may have differing laws on when minors can sign away various rights, enter into contracts, etc.
Sunspace lives in Canada.
I’m in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area).
And if the minor does not have copyright over an item, does he automatically acquire such copyright upon reaching the age of majority?
There have been some recent cases regarding student copyrights in the context of schools’ submitting assignments to anti-plagiarism services. I’ll try to remember to look them up tomorrow.
There is no age of majority in the Copyright Act.
Here we go:
A.V., a minor, by his next friend Vanderhye v. iParadigms LLC, No. 08-1424 (4th Cir. April 16, 2009) – Holds that submitting student texts to an anti-plagiarism database is a transformative use and thus constitutes a fair use under the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. §107. This opinion seems to assume that the students hold copyright interest in their compositions (which, to me anyway, seems a safe assumption).
Christen v. iParadigms LLC No. 1:10cv620 (E.D. Va. August 4, 2010) – Holds that actions by students for conversion, replevin, and unjust enrichment under Virginia state law arising from the submission of student works to the anti-plagiarism service were pre-empted by the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. §301(a). This ruling doesn’t have to assume that the students actually hold any copyright interest, only that the rights that they are asserting are the “subject matter” of federal copyright law. But nevertheless, as I read it, there seems to be an assumption that the students do hold copyright interest.
And considering that some students are required to show a portfolio of their work to colleges and employers, I’d have a hard time believing that any school or district would be a prick about copyright. I could be wrong, but I doubt it.
As I’m trying to say, it can’t get that far. Copyright law gives rights to the author of a work, and it’s pretty clear to me that in these cases, the student is the author of the work.
If it were me, I would not have even communicated with the school to ask permission. In my view, that’s just asking for trouble.
I agree. (Note: Clearly I am not in the same high level of expertise as others in this thread. So this is a step down in expert quality of advice. You have been cautioned.)
Note that there is what should hold up in court and what lawyers can make a mess of. If the OP just went ahead and did his thing with his writings, the chances of being “caught” are probably quite tiny. And if he did, then the school district lawyers would have to go thru and run the numbers on whether it would be worth their time and trouble to get some $ out of it. (Not necessarily for just this case. Sometimes people will do a lawsuit that’s going to cost them since it will Send A Message to others and discourage others in the future. Again unlikely in this case.)
Note that for the school district to get real money in a lawsuit for copyright infringement it had to file an official copyright form with the US government. I seriously doubt it did this with all the student’s submissions. Too much time and money. So the most they could get is just get you to withdraw the publication and pay some fees. You see how they would be stupid to start a lawsuit over this?
OTOH, if you ask for permission, they send a threatening letter, and you go ahead, then they have grounds and motivation to get nasty with you. They will also be looking for your work to appear so it’s more likely to get noticed. There is no advantage in this particular situation as far as I can see.