4-Your Intellectual Property

From Beth Samuelson November 21st, 2018

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Transcript:

Once scholars have entered the information ecosystem, they will want to publish and present their ideas to others. As a result, they must decide what to do with their intellectual property. As soon as the scholar’s idea is fixed in a tangible medium of expression—for example, when it can be read by others on a computer or on a piece of paper—it's copyrighted!

Copyright is best thought of as a bundle of rights, granted to authors by the United States Copyright Act. Generally, these rights include reproduction, distribution, making derivative works, public performance, and public display.

Scholars have all of these rights just by fixing their ideas in writing or another form of expression. Scholars can retain their rights. However, they usually need to grant their rights in copyright to others, in order to share their work formally so that it can be part of the information ecosystem.

There are several different options for scholars interested in giving publishers or other entities some of their rights.

Three common options are:

Transferring their copyright;

Granting a license for others to use some of these rights;

Or retaining their copyright and licensing their work under a Creative Commons license.

A transfer of copyright means that scholars give the person or entity they are transferring copyright to all of the rights that they have as an author. This is generally permanent and means that the author must ask permission to use the work, as they no longer hold the copyright.

A license grants others permission to use some of the rights that authors hold, while still enabling the author to retain some of their rights. For example, a publisher would need the right to reproduce and distribute the work in order to publish it. A license would enable them to do this.

Finally, a Creative Commons license is a type of license that allows copyright holders to retain their copyright while explicitly articulating how others can use that work.

Just as citation is a common practice in the information ecosystem, asking permission to use others’ work for specific kinds of uses is an important and ethical practice. One benefit of using a Creative Commons license is that it enhances the efficiency of the information ecosystem, because others don’t have to contact the author and ask permission about if or how they can use the work. Thus, Creative Commons is intended to facilitate a sharing culture where everyone can distribute and re-mix work, allowing it to be widely read and reused.

As a graduate student, you create intellectual property every day and you have rights! The Library is here to help you understand those rights as you enter the information ecosystem. Contact IUSW@indiana.edu to get started.