Assignment
- Transfers ownership
- May prevent your use of your work
An assignment is a transfer of the ownership of the copyright.
Example: Selling
your house
The impact of assignment of a copyright work is that you no longer
own it and therefore cannot freely use it. If you assign the rights
in your work to a publisher, you give up any ownership interests
you have in the work.
By assigning the copyright, if you want to include a significant
part of the work in a course pack for one of your courses, or in
a later publication, you will need to get permission from the publisher.
This may mean you will possibly have to pay royalties to use what
you authored. Since a copyright lasts for at least 70 years, even
if your book goes out of print, you cannot reproduce it without
permission.
Be cautious in assigning copyright to publishers and external entities.
Make sure that you will be able to accomplish what you want in the
future with the work you created. |
