Ownership of Copyright

Reprinted from IEEE Professional Communication. Papers published in technical journals are most useful when their copyrights are owned by the journal publisher. Under the new Copyright Law, copyrights must be transferred to the publisher in order for the publisher to fulfill its traditional role of protecting copyright on its own behalf and on behalf of its authors and their employers. By holding copyright to all copyrightable material it publishes, the publisher can ensure consistent reprint and republication policies, can enable legitimate copying which the new law would otherwise prohibit and can collect and set copying fees when appropriate.