I was under the impression that sovereign immunity only applied to suing of state actors (ie employees / officials, etc) but I guess it can be applied writ-large to entire institutions as well based on the copyright infringement ruling?
Sounds like a job for the state legislature to handle - writing out an exception to immunity for infringement. Otherwise why would anyone bother attempting to do licensed work in Texas at all?
The immunity from copyright and patent claims is critical to universty researches. Without it basic research would get mired in patent and copyright claims.
Many would be eventually ruled as fair use but that requires a judge to make a judgement as to the fair use factors. SI just requires the judge to see that it is the uni of Texas.
The uni doesnt care about the photographers licence fee. It cares about not getting by a phama company because a researcher happened to use a chemical that was under patent.
Plenty of research gets done by corporations, private universities, and research institutes with needing immunity from copyright and patent claims. If public universities want immunity from copyright and patent claims then the resulting research should not be able to be copyrighted or patented.
Sounds like a job for the state legislature to handle - writing out an exception to immunity for infringement. Otherwise why would anyone bother attempting to do licensed work in Texas at all?