Authorship Rights

[memi]

I worked in an University as a PostDoc and produced some data. After 1.5 years, i left from that university. 1 year later my leave, my former supervisor published paper and used my data. I have the original excel and word files. What should I do to get my authorship right. I already contacted with dean and the other people in the university. They said I stole those data. I had emails which contains these data and I sent them to my supervisor on those days. I did not allow me to check my mails (after I left, they closed my university account). what can I do about it? what kind of rights I have?
Thanks

[Mr. Knowitall]

Have you already exhausted your administrative remedies and appeals with the University? If not, start there. If so, hire a lawyer and file a lawsuit.

[memi]

Have you already exhausted your administrative remedies and appeals with the University? If not, start there. If so, hire a lawyer and file a lawsuit.

But the cost of lawyer too much 275$ per hour. I cannot afford that.
Do you think i can get any response from university?

[KeyWestDan]

What rights you might have are extremely debatable. Even if you could establish those, you could not establish any damages and certainly none of any significance. A civil action would be pointless.

You produced "some data." That does not tell us very much. However, in a nutshell, producing data does not have any copyright protection. It doesn't sound like any creative work. Collections of facts, or "data" does not have copyright protection and thus you really don't have any ownership interest that is enforceable. Databases have not been copyright protected as a rule. Further, the university could argue it was a work for hire, or that someone in your position didn't have any ownership interest in the data collected.

Obviously, if you only collected data, you have no "authorship" that needs to be acknowledged and you have no copyright interest that can be enforced in court.

This would also have to be in federal court and a copyright lawyer with academic knowledge would cost you $500 an hour plus. You don't have any chance of recovering a dime, so it would be a pretty stupid undertaking.

Your ego is obviously much larger than either your budget or your level of common sense, to say nothing of your writing ability.

P.S. This is a US forum. Are you even in the US?