Columbia Spat Tests Question of When Professors Own Their Work

Columbia University’s acrimonious fight with a late professor’s foundation may help resolve long-murky questions of when academics own the rights to their work.

The case revolves around the years of work by Persian scholar Ehsan Yarshater in assembling Encyclopaedia Iranica, a comprehensive research tool dedicated to the study of Iranian civilization, and the conflicts that arose over copyrights on that work after Yarshater died in 2018.

Columbia in August asked a Manhattan federal court to rule that it’s always owned the rights to the volumes of research compiled by Yarshater. A month later, the Encyclopaedia Iranica Foundation accused Columbia of ...