College Copyright Policies - Different for OER materials?

[Lorah Gough]

I would like to get some information from members about their college's copyright policy as related to OER materials.

Here at Houston Community College currently have a recommended policy being reviewed by our Chancellor, but our legal council is wanting to know what other colleges are doing? Our recommended policy is that faculty retain the copyright for OER created materials.

Do other colleges have one copyright policy that covers all faculty created materials?
Do they have a different policy when faculty create OER materials?
What is your policy (if you can share it)?

[Judy Baker]

Hi Lorah:

You may be interested in this whitepaper from BYU: http://education.byu.edu/a2k/documents/oer_policy_backgrounder.pdf

This document was written by "Members of the IPT 692R class at BYU."

See page 16 where it discusses Intellectual Property and OER.

"One of the most troubling and expensive aspects of OER adoption at institutions is the
development of a consistent process to protect the institution from violation of
intellectual property (IP) laws. Some institutions maintain IP policies that identify
faculty authors as the Copyright holder; in such cases open licensing of the faculty
authors' IP is little more than the formality of s/he adopting a Creative Commons license
(see below). In other institutions, the school, college, or university may own faculty
authored materials--for example, as "work for hire". In such cases the institution must
agree to make the IP available under an open license. Regardless of the legality, faculty
may be sensitive to institutional control over open licensing of IP; therefore, institutions
should consider an "opt-in" policy as recommended above.
Some IP found in learning materials may be owned by third-parties, for example,
textbook publishers. To avoid third-party copyright infringement, all materials to be
published in the OER library should first be screened and third-party IP identified. Thirdparty
IP owners may be contacted to request consent for publishing of materials as OER,
or such materials may be filtered or removed prior to OER publishing. To this end, many
institutions maintain a dedicated staff within the OER project assigned to screen
materials; other utilize other campus resources, such as library or administrative staff. Alternatively, the responsibility of screening out third-party IP may be left to faculty,
similar to the responsibility they already accept when presenting materials in the
classroom."

- Judy Baker

[Barbara Illowsky]

At Foothill-De Anza CCD we have in our faculty contract that faculty retain all copyrights (including OER) UNLESS creating the material was part of the job description or was paid for by the District. Retaining copyrights includes materials created while on sabbatical and while using office computers. It is a very generous provision, IMHO.

http://fa.fhda.edu/agreement_articles.html

Click on Article 39 and scroll to 39.3