Q: I was working outside the scope of my employment contract and created fitness curriculum, who owns the rights?
I work for a nonprofit retirement community and am contracted to teach fitness classes and do personal training. I happen to have a background in education and writing, so I used those skills to create fitness curriculum, which is a task outside the scope of my contract. They paid me my hourly rate as I created it and now want to sell what I created to a fitness company who will use it for their certification program. Does my employer own the rights to my work because they paid me my hourly wage as I created it, or do I retain some or all of the rights because I am not under contract with them to write/create fitness curriculum?
A: A fitness curriculum is probably not protected by intellectual property rights. A recent decision from the Ninth Circuit involving the creator of Bikram yoga addressed this very question. You could have the fitness company pay you to create instructional or educational material for them for a fee; but, you likely cannot own the rights to fitness routine under the current state of copyright law.
A: As far as current copyrights law are concerned, a fitness routine is not copyrightable. More details on your case would be necessary for a better analysis and conclusion.
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