Intellectual Property (IP)

Obtaining and sharing information online is so easy that it's not always obvious when we step over the legal line. Intellectual Property (IP) is creative or intellectual work which can be considered as an asset or physical property, and the laws which protect IP are:

• copyright - writings and recordings
• trademarks - product or organisational branding
• design rights - the appearance of a product
• patents - industrial processes and inventions

More information about Intellectual Property: UK Copyright Service and How to try to avoid violating IP laws.

Copyright

Copyright is the legal protection that enables the creator of an original work to control how it is used. Copyright subsists in original works of all sorts, including:

• literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works
• web pages, computer programs, and databases
• sound recordings, films and broadcasts
• typographical arrangements of published editions
• images, diagrams, graphs and charts

As an educator you may frequently need to search for digital content to adapt for your own teaching purposes. The laws are not the same in every country; for the UK, please visit:

• Copyrightuser.org: Understanding rights, permissions and exceptions

• Information about IP Permissions (Download for reference)

Plagiarism

The other situation in which IP will come to the fore will be with student work. Occasionally, you will suspect students of copying work they've found on the internet and submitting it as their own. Sometimes this is through ignorance of the IP laws, while other times it is deliberate. There are various methods to detect and prevent plagiarism being used at your institution. We will look at this more closely later in this course.

[ LINK TO INSTITUTIONAL IP GUIDANCE IF RELEVANT ]