How do they figure a review someone posts on the internet is under copyright by the party being reviewed? That point baffles me, and I'm used to copyright making no sense.
I haven't read the contract, but I'll go out on a limb and speculate a bit. The article mentions "copyright assignment." This suggests to me that perhaps the contract assigns copyright on all future reviews to the dentist. E.g. something along these lines:
"If you write a review of our services, the copyright on said review will be immediately assigned to us."
As the patient's lawyer notes, there's a good chance that fair use and unconscionability (two different doctrines) would render such a term unenforceable.
Again, this is just speculation based on a hint in the article.
I wonder what happens if a) the hypothetical sentence carried legal weight, and b) I was then employed by someone who tasked me with writing reviews of said dentist for them.
My employer would effectively have to go to court against the dentist to see who owns the words I type, right?
IANAL, but I believe that if the copyright of the review is owned by your employer (since you wrote it for him), then you would not have the legal right to assign the copyright to your dentist, and therefore the copyright clearly remains with your employer.
