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KNEA wins intellectual property rights issue at Kansas Supreme Court

The long-awaited decision in the Pittsburg State University/KNEA fight to bargain intellectual property rights was received from the Kansas Supreme Court.

The high court concluded that neither state nor federal law preempts the subject of intellectual property from being included in negotiations. The case goes back to the Kansas Public Employee Relation Board.

The case arises from a dispute at Pittsburg State University. PSU/KNEA contends intellectual property rights directly relate to wages and promotion. In refusing to negotiate, PSU claimed bargaining intellectual property rights was preempted by federal law and wasn't a condition of employment, and it won a ruling from the Kansas Public Employee Relation Board (PERB).

That decision, however, was later overturned by a state district court, which agreed with KNEA that intellectual property has a direct bearing on crucial subjects of employment such as salary, compensation, promotion and tenure. Pittsburg State, represented by the Kansas Board of Regents, appealed that decision, which landed the issue in the Kansas Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court win is the next step in the process, said KNEA General Counsel David Schauner. PERB will now have to address the issue, again.

The dispute began in 1998 when the Board of Regents publicly announced a broad intellectual property policy which stated that the Regents owned everything professors created regardless of when and where it was produced or how it related to an instructor's area of assignment.

PSU adopted the intellectual property policy without negotiating with the KNEA affiliate at Pittsburg State University.

PSU KNEA filed a prohibitive practice maintaining intellectual property rights, which include books, articles, writings, musical compositions, works of art and inventions, are a condition of employment and are a mandatory subject of bargaining.

"The rights to share in the profits derived from a professor's intellectual activity should be part of professional negotiations," Schauner said.

He said the issue is over whether faculty representatives should be able to negotiate agreements that could lead to the sharing of profits from the commercialization of intellectual property, such as new inventions.

KNEA UniServ Director Tony White called the policy "onerous because if a physics teacher wrote a children's book, it would belong to the university."

Since then the Regents, and thus PSU, have changed the policy. As it stands, the policy differentiates profits, provides for a fair use provision and deals only with work for which instructors are actually employed, or "work for hire."

KNEA PSU prefers the new policy, "but policies live from meeting to meeting. It may be good today, onerous tomorrow," White said. "We want an agreement that cannot be easily changed again and maintains the current policy."

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