Intellectual property rights in a digital world
The issue
Intellectual property rights and licensing have become key issues as more and more digital content has gone online. Institutions need to know how to share and protect their own outputs while not infringing the rights of others.
The huge potential of digital technology has also helped staff and students create and reuse content more independently, so an understanding of rights can help them do this effectively and safely.
The background
The Higher Education Funding Council for England recommends that every institution establishes a clear intellectual property rights policy including IT guidelines and codes of practice for staff and students.
What you can do
Understand the law
- Read our essential guide to intellectual property law and copyright legislation
- Understand your obligations with regard to intellectual property rights.
Learn about licences for different kind of content
- Read our licensing toolkit for senior managers
- Our visualisation tool will take you through key steps and decisions needed to deal with the intellectual property rights and licensing issues
- Further issues are addressed in our open educational resources infokit.
Explore open content licences such as Creative Commons
- Read about the benefits of open content licenses in our briefing paper
- Our overview of the ‘openness’ of open content licences provides a useful guide to the various forms of licence currently available.
Understand the long term role of IPR
- Our videos, aimed at universities, libraries and museums, examine the role of intellectual property rights in sustaining digital content long after its initial funding.
Keep up with the debate
Jisc responds on the sector’s behalf to proposed changes in intellectual property legislation at national and European level.
See our recent statement on the Hargreaves Review and our report into the value and benefit of text mining.