GBTA has implemented a strong—and fundamentally wrong—intellectual property (IP) policy. I'm raising the issue here to ask your help in getting GBTA back on track. I've run out of patience trying to do this on my own.
GBTA's new IP policy affects anyone who:
• Speaks at a GBTA event
• Contributes to a GBTA committee
• Provides volunteer services to GBTA
In short, it affects many of the people reading this blog.
Problems for Presenters: GBTA's policy, read literally, gives GBTA broad license rights in any intellectual property a GBTA presenter has ever created—whether for GBTA or any other party. This is no ordinary speaker release form. The language is surprisingly and needlessly broad.
Problems for Committee Members and other Contributors: It gets worse. GBTA's new policy requires you to transfer—as in give away—all your rights to whatever IP you may develop for or contribute to GBTA—and potentially all your other IP you've ever created.
I hope you're thinking, "There's no way GBTA's policy reads this way—Gillespie must be over-reacting." Unfortunately, I'm not. These conclusions were drawn by Michael Garvin, a partner who specializes in IP litigation at the law firm of Hahn Loeser. I retained Mike to pour some cold water on my concerns. Instead, he confirmed them.
Here's Mike's eight-page legal analysis of GBTA's IP policy. (Note that Mike successfully defended my former firm in a patent infringement suit. I trust his work.)
I raised my initial concerns to GBTA back in late April. GBTA's response was basically, "Sorry that you feel that way. You've misunderstood our intentions." Surely GBTA has no intention of picking anyone's IP pocket. But IP language matters a lot, and this language is way too broad. It should be an easy fix.
I elevated the issue to Zane Kirby, GBTA's Senior Vice President, and sent him the legal analysis in late May. Zane and I were hoping to connect last week, and now I understand he's out all this week. This new policy potentially affects every presenter at GBTA's Convention in July. Time is running out to get this changed.
One Solution: The Stanford University Approach
Stanford uses this speaker release to obtain appropriate rights from presenters. It is written in simple English, and lets presenters choose a very fair and practical method for sharing IP rights by using the Creative Commons license structure.
ACTE, GBTA's main competitor, uses an even simpler approach. "We stopped requesting IP assignments a couple of years ago. Basically, today, all we do is ask for permission to post the presentations in ACTE Connect," said Ron DiLeo, ACTE's Executive Director. The point is that there are far simpler and much less aggressive approaches available to GBTA.
I'd like to see GBTA release everyone who has already accepted GBTA's current IP policy, and to implement a Stanford-style speaker release form in its place.
If you share these concerns, please comment here, and/or send a note to your GBTA Chapter President, or to Mike McCormick, GBTA's executive director. Mike can be reached at mmccormick@gbta.org.
Hopefully, GBTA will quickly modify its IP policy, presenters can safely share their materials, and I'll be able to present the two sessions that GBTA has asked me to do. One of those sessions, ironically, is on innovation.
Scott Gillespie is the author of Gillespie's Guide to Travel + Procurement. These thoughts are excerpted with permission from his blog.