RAUK - Archived Forum - Who does it belong to.......

Hi all

Just would like to put a few questions to you all on ownership!!!!!!!

Lets say you ask a landowner/organisation if you can conduct a survey/study using refugia tins and visual on their land.

The landowner/organisation isn't paying for the service but due to interest will arrange for the "tin" buying and cutting.

After a short while the tins go out and the interest level through the local conservation orgs etc is growing but the landowner/organisation wants first bite at the cherry, bottom line is he wants all records of anything that is recorded or found etc to go through him/organisation then they will "pass" it on to the relevent organisations. Bearing in mind that the surveyor doesn't work for the landowner.

I was under the impression that the author of the survey had ownership of it since no money was paid for him/her to conduct the survey in the first place.

Any views??????

It is best to get them to sign a contract that states in the small print that the records remain the intellectual property of the person carrying out the survey. This is not much help now, but it might be worth bearing in mind for the future.

I would think that it would be very difficult for this landowner/organisation to stop you passing the survey data to any organisation/recording group etc. you chose. Though you would need professional legal advice to get the bottom line, the fact you collected the data voluntarily would have some sway I am sure.

I'm seriously considering withdrawing entirely from carrying out voluntary survey work, due in part to this sort of petty politics, difficulties with some local wildlife groups when it comes to obtaining permissions and also organisations choosing to ignore simple management recommendations, a very sad situation indeed.