Peggy I'm a little confused about exactly what you mean, the customer is the employer and the society is the employee... It seems to me that the researcher who does the research holds the copyright unless there is a written agreement with the Society that they (the Society) will hold it. That's the way writer's do things. If they write for a magazine, they still hold their own copyright. I think it gets even more hazy though when you realize that most of the "research" is a combination of articles, perhaps written by another (who still holds their copyright), or copies of government documents that can't be copyrighted anyway. One has to be very careful about this. I've seen "collections" given to a Society that contain work written by people other than the collector. Just because they donated their collection to a Society doesn't mean the Society can freely publish everything in the collection. The same thing would be true about a lot of our research, don't you think? Just my opinion. Yvonne In a message dated 8/18/99 2:30:05 PM Central Daylight Time, COPYRIGHT- [email protected] writes: << But can the same be said for when your customer is the employer and the society becomes the employee? This is where my confusion and my interpretation becomes gray. It comes down to - who holds the copyright when the society hangs it's shingle out for research business (the society or the paying customer)? >>