Legal Question in Intellectual Property in Illinois
Reprint rights
I work for a company which often has its articles published in journals and articles written about us in newspapers and other publications. For most of the articles we have paid for a couple thousand hard copy reprints of each. We are now interested in posting pdfs of the articles on to our website for educational and advertising purposes. Most of the publications offer eprints with a nice pdf and anywhere from a one time fee for unlimited usage or a yearly fee for posting it on the website. I'm trying to figure out if there is any reason I just can't scan a copy of the reprints we legally had made and paid for, make a pdf from that scan and post it on our website. Thanks for any advice you can give.
2 Answers from Attorneys
Re: Reprint rights
The question with many journals is that when the articles are submitted for publication, the journal maintains the copyright in the article as part of the agreement for publication. You need to read the "fine print" that came with the agreement to publish to see what applies to your situation.
Re: Reprint rights
Who owns the copyright to the articles that your company has printed in journals? If your company has the copyright in the actual article, you could probably post those on your website. However, you could not take the journal�s reprints and post them because the journal has the copyright in the article as it appears in the journal; you would need the journal�s permission to do so.
As for the newspaper/other publications articles � the newspaper/other publications has the copyright in those articles and you cannot post the articles or the reprints without permission.
Just because you purchased a copy of something does not give you the right to do whatever you want with it. For example, just because you buy the latest best seller doesn�t mean you can post it on a website.
Good luck.
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