The AFT is supporting a Senate bill that would restore intellectual property rights of public employees. In a May 14 letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, AFT legislative director Charlotte Fraas outlined the union's support for the Intellectual Property Protection Restoration Act of 2002 (S.B. 2031) as a first step in reversing a series of recent court cases that restrict public employees' rights under federal law. The bill would allow a state employee the right to sue a state agency, including a public university, when the agency or university infringes on the person's intellectual property rights. Federal laws currently provide copyright, patent, and trademark protections and a means of recourse when the laws are violated. But states have been hiding behind the 11th Amendment's state sovereignty principle to deflect these suits. S.B. 2031 says that if a state wants to be free to sue any entity that violates the state's intellectual property rights (for example, a corporation that makes money off a product of state university-generated research), the state must waive its 11th Amendment protections and agree that state employees are allowed to sue the state for the same violations if and when they occur." State and local public employees should have the same right as their private sector counterparts to labor, civil rights and property protections under federal law," Fraas says.

[May 24, 2002]