Q: This past year our Community College launched a successful national writing conference (Nora Roberts Writing Institute), we are planning for next year and would like to tighten up some of our internal processes relating to contractual agreements with presenters.
Who would you suggest I reach out to within LERN to discuss the following related items as they pertain to a this national Conference model?
1. Examples of contractual agreements with keynotes and presenters that discuss intellectual property – (organization retaining property rights or not)
2. Guidelines for an organization retaining property rights for conference keynotes and breakouts sessions – when do they – when do they not
3. Examples of contractual agreements with keynotes and presenters, for the recording, repackaging and selling of conference keynotes and break Jout sessions
4. Examples of organizations that are recording and reselling conferences.
Two of the presenters at our conference were Sylvia Day and Erica Bauermeister – both internationally known authors. The breakout sessions were lead but nationally known authors and HCC faculty members.
A: Speaker Contracts and Reselling Conference Session Information
So everyone understands, this is not legal advice. We are not attorneys and do not represent this information as legal advice in any way. LERN is providing information based on the experience of organizations with similar or related experiences. We do recommend you consult your college’s attorney as one of our recommendations.
While the specifics in your situation may be different, your issue is not unusual with respect to speaker contracts, intellectual property ownership or rights, and reselling conference sessions.
Speaker Contracts
Our understanding and experience with working with other organizations is that whatever is written in the agreement is what is respected and followed. Whatever you and the individual presenter agree to is what you both need to follow. There is no commonly understood ‘rights’ or obligations on either party. They need to be spelled out in writing.
Many presenters, speakers and independent teachers who create and/or develop their own material do not want it reproduced in any manner. Others do not want it reproduced in any manner without a substantial financial split or gain. So your experience with speaker reluctance to allow reproduction is common.
Most agreements are very simple one page documents. The cost of any legal procedure usually far exceeds the possible gain for either party, thus the simplicity of the agreement.
Most agreements have a high degree of trust and mutual understanding over what is expected and what is to be done, and not done.
In general, our understanding is that intellectual property ownership goes to the person or entity paying to have the information created and developed. If your college paid your speakers to create and develop the information, you could make a case -- in writing and before entering the work arrangement – for your institution owning the material. This is common with work created and developed by employees of an organization, for example. For a conference session where someone is paid to present and deliver, that speaker or presenter essentially has created and developed the material. There is no exclusivity clause and it is understood that the presenter owns the material unless that is written into the contract. Since presenters earn substantial income from speaking, and also usually have a great personal pride and interest in their own work, few if any speakers in our experience sign off on ownership of material they have created and developed.
If a speaker agrees to have her or his session recorded with reselling of the session, it is standard and common for the speaker to receive a royalty based on the sales of that session. A common royalty payment would be from 10% to 20% of the income generated from the speaker’s tapes or sales. This would need to be specified in writing in advance of contracting with a given speaker.
LERN recommends you follow the direction of your President. We also recommend you provide your President with ongoing and updated information so that the best decisions can be made on behalf of your college.
Reselling Business Plan
You have to do a 3-5 page business plan for reproducing your conference sessions and reselling them. We do not have such a business plan to review.
The business plan needs to spell out, with numbers, who the audience is that will buy the conference, why there is a reason the audience will buy the conference package, the cost of reproducing the conference sessions, the market budget, and staff time in terms of both time devoted to the project, and a comparison with other income producing activities that staff will not be able to perform in order to engage in the conference reselling.
To benefit both your continuing education and community service unit, and the best interests of the college, you clearly need to state in terms of time and dollars the staff time investment in reselling the conference versus what you can generate from other continuing education activities.
Conference Reselling Market
In our experience with a thousand colleges and universities over three decades, we have seen few instances of reproducing and reselling conference packages that have been done successfully.
Reproducing and reselling conference sessions is commonly done by associations, where the presenter is paid a royalty based on sales, and where the audience is the association’s members not attending the conference. In terms of audience, you are not in the same position, with the same list and the same loyalty or repeat customer relationship.
sales.
Cost of Research
Your President should also know the cost in staff time of simply researching and exploring the potential of reproducing and reselling the conference sessions. Given that there appears to be resistance among speakers and the institute with whom you are working, this could double or triple the amount of time and cost needed to work out some arrangement. And just your time in researching this issue does take time and thus money, income and profit (surplus in our nonprofit world, but more bluntly expressed as profit) away from continuing education income generation.
Recommendations on Proceeding
In terms of following your President’s direction and proceeding to repackage and resell the conference sessions, you should consult with your college’s attorney and request that the attorney be the lead person in negotiating with speakers and presenters. You are in new territory here, and your college attorney will be the best person to represent the best interests of your college and of course, conduct the activities and create the contracts properly.
Further consulting. LERN is available and would be pleased to review a business plan for reproducing and reselling the conference. Unless we indicate otherwise after receiving the plan, our review would be complimentary as part of your LERN membership.
Attachments: A sample speaker agreement
Excerpt from our book Advanced Teaching Online, Fourth Edition, relevant to intellectual property ownership
https://lern.zendesk.com/attachments/token/6AmtuBWEilt6nlYRTbkhYsvJM/?name=kb15910_1.docx
https://lern.zendesk.com/attachments/token/Egf0YJcLrlcD4VdSPuovJAqhm/?name=kb15910_2.doc
https://lern.zendesk.com/attachments/token/a27ejg7HFmXN8auZEKpghriLk/?name=kb15910_3.docx