[Wikimedia-l] Copyright on Xrays

[Tomasz Ganicz]

2012/8/20 Max Harmony <maxh at sdf.lonestar.org>:
> 2012/8/20 Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org>:
>> Under US law (I know very little about the law of other countries):
>>
>> Unless the patient somehow contributed creatively to the image (broke
>> his bones in a certain creative pattern), it's certainly not the HMO
>> or patient.  If the X-ray tech is an employee, then it's certainly not
>> the X-ray tech.
> But the copyright of a work for hire goes to the employer. The X-ray
> tech would get the copyright, but they're employed by the hospital.
> The hospital, in turn, is employed by the patient. As such, I would
> think the patient does own the copyright. Is a similar logic not
> applied to, say, wedding photos, in which an photographer is employed
> by a company which is in turn employed by the couple?
>

No. Patient is a customer of the hospital, not the employer of the
hospital :-) We are talking about legal issue, so we should stick to
legal definitions of words (not the moral ones).

In case of weeding photos all depends on what is written in the
agreement between a couple and the photographer/agency. The agreement
might and might not contain the clause of copyright transfer. If it
does not - from legal POV pictures can be used only for personal needs
- even publishing them on facebook is questionable in that case..

-- 
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
http://www.cbmm.lodz.pl/work.php?id=29&title=tomasz-ganicz