I think we need to be careful about our terms and legal jurisdictions here.

When Lydia wrote "by virtue of having a patent, they hold the copyright to that intellectual property", she may be referring to the texts of the patent application, not the patent (idea) itself. Copyright law in various countries may extend to the text in a patent application separately from any patent rights (a different type of intellectual property) granted if the patent application is accepted. See, for example, a discussion of this in US copyright law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_on_the_content_of_patents_and_in_the_context_of_patent_prosecution .

Since Lydia is working in Canada, she'll need to check on Canadian copyright law to see whether it extends to the texts of patent applications. If not, she can reproduce the texts of patent applications as she pleases since they're in the public domain. If so, then she'll want to check whether the researcher's institution claims copyright over all of the patent applications listed on the CV or, more likely, only those applied for while working at the institution and using institutional resources. Then she'll want to archive the appropriate ones.

All that said, some patent offices make all patent applications available on their website anyway, and Google scoops up many of them as well: https://support.google.com/faqs/answer/2539193?hl=en . So if you trust that they will be available in the future through at least one of these channels, you might not bother archiving any patent applications in your IR.

--Kevin

On 10/30/13 3:58 PM, Wilhelmina Randtke wrote:
The intellectual property is a patent, not a copyright. The actual patent
that was granted can be retrieved from the US Patent and Trademark Office.
The paper documentation can be copied and posted freely by anyone.
Copyright is not an issue here.

-Wilhelmina Randtke
On Oct 30, 2013 2:45 PM, "Lydia Zvyagintseva" <lyd...@ualberta.ca> wrote:

Sure, apologies for out-of-the-blue questions.

Well, a faculty member approaches the repository with their CV and asks us
to investigate all their publications to see how much of their work we can
deposit. They list their patents as part of their scholarly output on their
CV. My understanding is that by virtue of having a patent, they hold the
copyright to that intellectual property, and since they produced it in an
educational institution, we are free to capture their work in an IR.
However, that would depend on what the details of the patent granted
include, which is there the communication with the faculty member has to
happen. Am I off the mark here? I found a couple of patents in arXiv and
wanted to see how others treat these types of documents.

Thank you!
L.


On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 1:08 PM, Matthew Sherman
<matt.r.sher...@gmail.com>wrote:

Can you provide context?  I am trying to understand why you would put a
patent in an IR.


On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 3:07 PM, Lydia Zvyagintseva <lyd...@ualberta.ca
wrote:

Hi everyone,

Forgive me if this question has been asked before on this listserv, but
I'm
trying to gather some info for proceeding with patents down the road.

Do you have patents in your IR? What priority do they take in your
repository process? What's your workflow when dealing with them? Any
special considerations?

Many thanks for any input!

--
*Lydia Zvyagintseva*
MA/MLIS Candidate
Founder, HackYEG <http://hackyeg.com>
School of Library and Information Studies
Humanities Computing
University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB
lyd...@ualberta.ca
lydiazv.com





--
*Lydia Zvyagintseva*
MA/MLIS Candidate
Founder, HackYEG <http://hackyeg.com>
School of Library and Information Studies
Humanities Computing
University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB
lyd...@ualberta.ca
lydiazv.com

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