Sharing and protecting your intellectual property in an online environment
Licensing and rights have become key issues globally as more and more content has gone online. Institutions need to know how to share and protect their own outputs in this online environment and avoid infringing the rights of others.
All works are potentially subject to copyright. By using the most appropriate licence, a copyright owner (usually an institution) can distribute an output to the widest possible audience for potential use, while protecting its intellectual property and that of third parties.
We’ve produced practical guidance and resources on all aspects of intellectual property rights and copyright law. In particular, we’re committed to helping you make your institution’s outputs as open as possible by taking advantage of new and emergent licences for open educational and other digital resources.
- The Higher Education Funding Council for England recommends that every institution establish a clear intellectual property rights policy 'including IT guidelines and codes of practice for staff and students'. Licensing forms the bedrock of any such policy. The licence chosen reflects how open or closed a resource can be and who has permission to access and use the licensed materials.
- A copyright owner can choose to license materials under a variety of licences, not just one. Our licensing toolkit for senior managers summarises the key-points about licensing and provides guidance to help you deliver content within a clear and open framework. A visualisation tool (PDF) will take you through the key steps and decisions you will need to take when dealing with the intellectual property rights and licensing issues associated with content generation and/or use.
- Open content licences, such as Creative Commons, ensure value for money and fairness for open content, while maintaining legal clarity. We’ve put together a briefing paper to explain the benefits. Our overview (PDF) of the ‘openness’ of open content licences provides a useful guide to the various forms of licence currently available.
JISC Legal has a wealth of guidance and information relating to intellectual property rights, including accessible guides to the essentials of intellectual property law and copyright legislation, as well as information about your obligations with regard to intellectual property rights
What does the future hold?
We’ll continue to monitor change in intellectual property rights and reflect the sector’s concerns at national and international level. We’re developing a range of tactical tools and training to help institutions explore different approaches to licensing.
Support from JISC Services
Our impact
Over the past 16 years we have funded nine programmes and 237 projects to help universities and colleges share and, where necessary, protect their intellectual property in an online environment. For example:
- The Reproduce programme enabled around half of 22 projects led by 15 different universities and colleges to demonstrate change, typically in policies around intellectual property rights issues and technical/educational support for repurposing.
- In 2008-9 JISC Legal saved the sector £295,000 by providing helpdesk guidance and advice to institutions about operating in an online environment.
- The Strategic Content Alliance, which is part funded by JISC, has produced guidance on intellectual property rights which has been downloaded more than 3000 times in the past 12 months. In the same period, 33 universities have attended the Alliance’s guidance and briefing events. ‘We’ve always seen the SCA IPR Toolkit as a one-stop shop for anything and everything related to IPR, and it’s provided us with a great foundation and a framework to build upon, and equally to feed our own work and challenges with IPR back to the SCA.’ Chara Balasubramaniam, deputy head of e-learning, St George's, University of London.
- In 2008/2009 JISC Digital Media saved the sector an estimated £196,680 in training costs by providing advice, guidance and training on creating, using and managing digital media.
