Copyright / ownership

[orangetlh]

I am currenty studying for a City and Guild level 3 in cabinet making as a apprentice. Part of the course is to know about risk assessments, training records etc etc. Now i dont have to implement these in my job to gain the qualification but as my boss has seen the syllabus, he is expecting me to as part of my job.

I dont mind doing it but, as it was my idea to do the training and i havnt got any time spare during the day to study, i am expected to do all practical and theory work in my own time. My question is, if i create these records and assessments and any other piece of data that will be used by the company in my own time, am i the legal owner of them and if it starts to get messy, can I remove them from the systems at work?

 

[r896neo]

What exactly are you doing for the company? Just studying the materials and then your boss wants you to give brief talks on the subject or is he expecting you to design some systems/ processes to implement what your learning?

It sounds very unlikely that this is in any kind of apprentice job description so i would query it from that oint of view of the extra work for your. As far as copyright goes, in the creative industry it is usually stipulated in a conntract of employment who will retain the intellectual property rights/ copyrights of designs/ systems used in the workplace.

Unless you are physically writing computer programs or something along that line copyright wont come into it, its a matter of job description??

If you do do anything like prgrams etc make sure you keep a record of the dates and where you created/ worked on them.

 

[mr]

I am not a lawyer however I do have experience of work for hire contracts.

I think you will find that any work that results in a product (a chair, a document or a computer program for example) done by yourself at the request of your boss or company and on company time will remain copyright of the company.
In the case of work done on your own time without recourse to company resources, and here this might mean the course if the company is paying for it or giving you time off to do it, may be copyright to you. However if your boss or company has requested that you do this work I suspect that ownership is theirs regardless of whose time you carry out the work on. If they have instructed you to do the work you would do it on their time I would have thought.
Im not sure what you mean by things starting to get messy but neither can I see the point in removing digital documents from systems once they are in place - it seems a little odd to go removing documents when you only need to make back ups in order to secure your own coursework. Removing document s could only be contstrued at best as mean spirited and at worst an attempt to harm their business which could land you in a heap of trouble.

Cheers Mike

 

[MrJay]

Depends on your contract. The law will assume that the author owns copyright unless it's been specified otherwise by contract - employment contracts (and college contracts) often refer to who can claim copyright. Copyright doesn't give you the right to withdraw - if you license, by agreement or otherwise, that the company can use your risk assessments you don't get to turn around at some random point and arbitrarily change your mind - though you if you're still employed and you come to doubt your risk assessments you should take it up with your boss/manager. If you are the copyright owner, then neither can your company insist that you don't reuse your work at some future employment.

Your company has various legal duties, including a duty of care that will often require a company to make risk assessments. It is up to the company to ensure that the risk assessments are fit for purpose. There is no scenario that would stand up in court whereby your company can pin the blame for an incident on a junior member of staff if one of their risk assessments turns out to be insufficient. The company would more likely be found negligent for entrusting health and safety policy to an apprentice.

Do the risk assessments and training records, show them to the boss - if he/she likes them then good on ya, you'll have done a good job - but the onus is on your boss to run the company properly.

 

[Fecn]

My question is, if i create these records and assessments and any other piece of data that will be used by the company in my own time, am i the legal owner of them and if it starts to get messy, can I remove them from the systems at work?

I would say that it's very unlikely that you'd be declared as the legal owner of the documents. The documentation you are producing in your own time is only part of the process. Presumably you did the actual assessment of the risks during the time you were at work and could see the risks being taken. You may not have written anything down whilst at work, but it would be hard to argue that you did the entire risk assessment exercise in your own time.

If you produced a sample risk assessment in your own time which was nothing to do with the company you work for (e.g. come and assess the risks I take in my shed), then your company would have no claim, but it sounds like the assessments you're doing are on behalf of your company, and the fact that you're doing them in your own time just means that you're paying back some of the loyalty the company's shown you by sending you on the course you wanted.

You might be able to ask for some extra money for the extra hours you've worked, or some of your normal working hours to dedicated to coursework, but I don't reckon you've got a leg to stand on with the copyright/Intellectual Property argument. - If you removed documents from their computers without permission, you could certainly get in a lot of trouble.

 

[greggy]

orangetlh, first of all risk assessments are the responsabilty of the company, the employer has a duty of care to all employees. an health and safety rep can do risk assessments. these should be carried out every time a new machine is placed in the workplace, for example,
you are the nominated health and safety rep, and do a risk assessment
and say in writing that it is safe, then fred bloggs use it and chops his finger off, even if it goes to court. you will NOT be liable in any way.
as for the rest sorry i cant help you. regards greggy
sorry mr jay, i did not see your post, and you are spot on.

 

[orangetlh]

Thanks for your help everyone, I think i will do it anyway purely for the experience, and like you have all said, at the end of the day the responsability rests with my employer.
Thanks everyone for your time

 

[JackL]

If it's any help, go to the Health &Safety Executive web site and click on Risk Assessment.
There are even pro forma risk assessment examples there for various tasks.
Once you have done one, you will find that the process is quite straight forward.
I have done many RAs whilst working in Local Gov. covering everything from sitting at a PC to installing flare stacks at landfill sites.
I would reiterate what others have said, the ultimate responsibility for the risk assessment lies with the employer and if he is delegating that task to someone else, then the employer has a resposibility in law to ensure that the person doing the risk assessment is suitably qualified to do so.

 

[newt]

I agree with Fecn, if you produce something that is a result of knowledge gained from employment the employer owns the copyright, unless things have recently changed. I assume they are paying for the training. This surprised me when I was at work, my company were looking for new ideas to Patent, and it was made clear that even if I invented something at home, that had the slightest link to knowledge gained at work, they would own it. The net result was there were very few new ideas.

 

[MrJay]

Copyright is assumed to belong to the author, not the employer; unless you enter into a contract that says otherwise.

 

[newt]

Then it must have been in my contract

 

[Jake]

Copyright is assumed to belong to the author, not the employer; unless you enter into a contract that says otherwise.

It's the other way around. Copyright (on stuff done at/for work) is assumed to belong to the employer, unless the employment contract says otherwise.

 

[MrJay]

Sorry, I wasn't very clear. If it's something you produce as part of your job then yes; but an employer would have no claim to copyright for things produced outside of work (such as in newt's example) or college unless you've entered into a contract to the contrary.

 

[Woody Alan]

I don't have it to hand but I am fairly sure my contract stipulates any ideas inventions in my field belong to my company whether I think of them at work or not, and if I were to resign I believe they still retain rights for up to two years.

Alan

 

[newt]

I agree with Woody Alan, thats exactly how it was told to me.

 

[exigetastic]

Taking a more pragmatic view....

The work you are doing currently outside work is effectively by choice (by virtue of wanting to do the course)

If your employer wants to add additional duties to your employment they should discuss it with you properly, and allocate time during your normal hours to do these tasks.

The risk assesments you are being asked to do are in all fairness not going to make you a millionaire, and would I guess have very limited monetary value to anyone else. Therefore removing/destroying them is a fairly pointless exercise, that at best would get you a crappy reference if you decided to move on.

But the act of doing them could have longer term financial benefits to you through the improved skill set you can demonstrate to future employers.


HTH

Si