Topics: Employment and IP law
The
Case of Pia
“And… Send!” Pia
gleefully said to herself as she pressed the Send key on her laptop. She had
reasons to be happy. She had just responded to Amita, the lousy HR person who
had participated in making her life miserable at Yuvi, her ex-employer.
Pia had joined the team a
little over a year ago. She was a very enthusiastic content writer who brought
her bubbly personality and inherent enthusiasm to her work. Her content was
always positive, funny, and most importantly – successful.
Her posts got great
engagement and her witty one-liners were often shared.
This led to her bosses
noticing her within 2 months. The CEO, Apsara, had invited her to coffee in her
office!
Over coffee, Apsara had
been genuinely interested in getting to know her. She had asked about her
family, hometown, education, hobbies, everything!
Just as they were at
their last few sips, an idea had suddenly occurred to Apsara – “Pia, I have an
idea. Would you like to do a Masterclass for the rest of our content team? This
will do two good things – one, instead of being jealous of you, they will start
to see you as a natural expert, and also understand how you are the tops in
whatever you do. Two, it will help you share some of that bubbly personality
with others while adding “Training” as a skill on your resume. How does that
sound?”
Pia had been thrilled.
Within two weeks, she had
prepared a course outline and some course content. Another two weeks, and she
was ready to roll!
The training head sat
with her on her course for a while and suggested that she should use innovative
training content like memes, cases, puzzles, as assessment instead of and old-fashioned
test at the end of the program.
This took her another
month to prepare, but finally the Training head had been absolutely delighted
with her work and had given the Go Ahead!
Pia ran this course for
the first batch and it was a smash hit!
The CEO called her and
hugged her. Then, she encouraged Pia to add “Trainer” to her Linkedin profile
skills.
The second batch was a
runaway success too. After that, Pia’s course had been added to the induction
for all content team joinees. She ran the program every two months.
Pia thought it was
natural to expect that this would lead to a promotion or at least a raise.
However, neither was
forthcoming. When she tried to broach the subject with her manager, she got the
usual spiel about how everyone needs to show commitment to advance in their
career. HR was not much helpful either.
In short, Pia became the
de facto subject matter expert of her team, but that translated into no role,
salary, or even designation change.
That, and other things at
work led to Pia slowly getting disengaged from her workplace.
8 months into the role,
she started looking around and in a couple of months, she found a role that
suited her better.
She resigned and her
resignation was received with.. well, resignation.
The boss made some customary noises about being disappointed and her having
a bright future with the company, but made no real effort to retain her or even
ask for her real reasons for leaving. Amita, her HR Business Partner, was
equally distant and uninterested in having a conversation.
Pia completed her notice
period, and on the last day, packed her bags and left.
Two weeks later, her
phone rang.
“Hey Pia.. How are you
doing?” A chirpy Amita sounded on the other end.
If Pia was surprised, she
did not show it, “Am good Amita. What’s up?”
“We were missing you here
ya. Hope you’ve settled in fine at the new place?”
“Don’t worry about that.
Why did you call?” Pia asked.
“Well, you know, we
needed to run the next training batch for new content writers, and we can’t
find your training material!”
“Oh, that’s because I took
it with me. It’s not there.” Pia said casually.
“You-took-it-with-you?”
Amita repeated slowly.
“Yeah!” Pia replied.
“You can’t do that! You
made that material while working for the company, so its company property.”
Amita’s tone was not exactly aggressive, but it was getting unfriendly pretty
fast.
“Errm, actually, I am the
creative owner of this content, so I have every right to take it with me. The
company has no right to content that I made as a favour to Yuvi.” Pia held her
ground.
“I’ll get back to you.”
Amita had been quick to disconnect.
A day later, Pia found an
email in her inbox. It was from a legal services firm, telling her that she was
being sued for stealing the company’s intellectual property without permission.
Since the content had been created by her during and in course of her
employment with Yuvi, it was covered under the term “Work Product”. As per law,
the intellectual rights to work products created by employees rest with the
employer by default.
Pia smiled. She had been
expecting this. First, she posted the aggressive email received from Yuvi on
Reviewer.com – a website to review one’s employers. Then, she sent an email to
her HR, marking a copy to her manager and the CEO. The email said:
Dear Team at Yuvi
The content in question is training
material. My designation at Yuvi was “Content Writer”. This role does not
include the creation of Training Content. Only work done as part of the role is
a work product. This content was created by me – not as a part of my work profile.
It was shared with the organisation as an act of kindness. Any content created
that is not in my work role cannot be a “work product”. I have kindly allowed
the organisation royalty free access to the content as well as my services as a
trainer without charging for these services.
If my designation had changed to
include Trainer in the work profile, any content created by me AFTER such
designation change would revert to the organisation on my resignation as “Work
product”. However, both these events did not occur.
Therefore, I am the absolute owner of
the training content and methodology, being its sole developer and
disseminator.
You are hereby instructed to refrain
from the use of the training content, or parts thereof, as well as the unique
pedagogy developed for this module. Using any part of such content subjects you
to potential royalty payments to the original creator.
This includes but is not limited to
memes, handouts, assignments, etc. used in the past as part of the trainings.
Sincerely
Pia.
“And… Send!” Pia gleefully said to herself as
she pressed the Send key on her laptop.
Questions for you
1. Which side do you
agree with? Why?
2. If the designation had
changed to include “Trainer” without any hike in salary, would the contention
of Pia hold? Why or why not?
3. In the normal course
of events, under what circumstances should the intellectual property created by
employees belong to the employer? Discuss your thoughts.
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