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Alberta Court of Queens Bench Rules No Copyright or Confidentiality in Proposed Doctoral Thesis Topic
On August 9, 2006, the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench dismissed an action that had been brought by a doctoral student against a professor for allegedly misappropriating the student's proposed thesis topic. The student alleged breach of copyright, breach of confidence and breach of fiduciary duty on the part of the professor who, after acting as the student's thesis advisor, had published an article on substantially the same topic that the student had proposed for a doctoral thesis. Although the professor no longer acted as the student's advisor after their initial meeting, the professor remained on the student's doctoral committee and was a member of the committee when he published the allegedly infringing article.
Madam Justice Veit rejected the copyright claim on the basic premise that copyright protects only the expression of ideas and not ideas themselves as well as her finding that the professor had not even seen any drafts of the student's thesis. With respect to the claim for breach of confidence, Justice Veit noted that ideas may be protected, in certain circumstances, by a duty of confidentiality. However, she found that no such duty arose in this case largely because the ideas discussed at the original meeting were "too vague and general to qualify as confidential information".
Finally, with respect to the claim for breach of fiduciary duty, Justice Veit did find that the professor owed a fiduciary duty to the student that, according to academic convention, obliged the professor to recognize any contribution on the part of the student to the professor's published article. However, Justice Veit found that this duty had not been breached because of the undeveloped nature of the ideas that the student had shared with the professor during their initial meeting.
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