The United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) recently published a report called the "UK intellectual property awareness survey 2006″. The report provides information on the state of intellectual property awareness in the UK for firms of all sizes in all sectors of industry.
According to the survey, big companies are more IP aware than small businesses. Therefore, efforts to promote IP awareness should be concentrated primarily on the latter. For larger companies, awareness should nevertheless be diffused within and throughout their organisations. IP awareness is seen as a means for SMEs and micro-enterprises to use their IP to grow into larger companies, including at the international level.
Download the report.
Source: www.ipr-helpdesk.org
The interesting bit is on page 20 of the report: Ownership of comissioned copyright work:
only!
call it obscure, I’d call it equally important…
So authors, note: companies generally are very likely not to know, that you own the copyright in the first place. So there might be your chance to push the issue, selling your copyright properly and make a few extra bucks. Except that this might warn them and make them more careful the next time round, imposing their conditions in a next contract …