In the United States, faculty and student ownership of intellectual property (IP) has become an important issue. The question of ownership has surfaced as a result of the increased acceptance and use of the Internet and distance education. The Internet and distance education have greatly changed the way we think and conduct our affairs with regard to learning and education. The IP issue requires change in policies and procedures to maintain relevance to pace with changing technology and educational practices. There seems to be no single view for how these problems shall be addressed. This issue has multiple areas of concern: the need for policies regarding faculty authoring and ownership, student authoring and ownership, the impact of the work-for-hire employment status on authoring and ownership, and online course material and licensing issues.The doctrine of fair use was established by the courts to exempt certain activities such as teaching and research from the legal requirements of the copyright law. Before the 1976 revision of the Copyright Act, only two cases were brought against teachers for copyright infringements. In both cases the teachers lost because their extensive copying was found to impact the copyright owner’s market for legally published copies. Although the 1976 act recognizes the existence of potentially fair uses, the act makes application of the principle subjective.Classroom guidelines attached to the act make application even more confusing. Potential impact on a new, lucrative market for sale of rights to copy portions of books and journals seems to dominate contemporary case law.Desktop publishing, the Internet, and Web-based teaching will further degrade traditional applications of fair use for educational purposes. Guidelines are provided for faculty and others considering dissemination of potentially copyrighted materials to students via digital technologies.The doctrine of fair use was formally adopted as a revision of the Copyright Act by the U.S. Congress in 1976. The doctrine of fair use exempts certain categories of activity in some instances from the legal obligation to obtain permission from the author of a work before copying, performing, or displaying that work. Potentially exempt activities include teaching, research, scholarship, reporting, commentary, and parody. The justification for the fair use exemption stems from the court’s view that sometimes free and open discourse about ideas can be a stimulant to the creation of new knowledge and new creative works. That was more than 30 years ago. Since then technologies for reproducing, copying and displaying copyrighted materials have changed dramatically, and the focus of teaching activities has expanded beyond the classroom to include the airwaves (as in educational TV) and the Internet.These changes have affected authors, teachers, and publishers. Perhaps it is time to revisit the subject to see if the definitions of “fair use” are still relevant. As the educational community moves toward Web-based education, and with a growing emphasis on distance learning, it may be time to look at the issue from the perspective of the changing face of education and technologies.Some argue that the “fair use” concept as it relates to education in fact is not “fair.” It is not like the copyright law whose definition was taken from the Western culture’s concepts of the individual and a free market based on capitalism. It is closely aligned with the concept of the ownership of the technologies used to reproduce or distribute the works and who will gain or lose financially from a particular type of use. The problems arise from the immediacy of the works being produced with digital technology, because of their “real-time” applications. For example, work created using desktop publishing and distance education, including Webcasting, class Web sites, e-learning, and in-class real-time Internet access. Based on these new realities, perhaps the 1976 act is no longer relevant. In 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act was enacted to update this legislation but did not thoroughly address the most pressing issues.In the United States, there has been little effort made to teach intellectual property legislation. This curriculum could not be found in college economics departments and business schools. The best attempts were sporadic courses under the umbrella of graduate courses in the economics of technology or asset management. Graduate schools (other than law schools) do not produce intellectual property research and teaching specialists.Placing intellectual property within the framework of business and economics courses causes them to be viewed from a perspective of commercial regulation or management techniques. Instead of being seen from a legislative point of view, this subject is viewed instead as a social or economic issue. Very few analytical papers even recognize that trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrecy laws operate quite differently from patents and these latter elements generally are not taught in economics courses. However, U.S. law schools offer extensive courses in IP law. While such courses are often taught by private practitioners, a few major law schools offer faculty with primary research and teaching interests in IP For example, Harvard’s Business School offers courses in managing technology; for example, a class called “commercializing science and high technology.” Students who attend this class represent the science, engineering, and medicine disciplines. It is from these schools that new generations of scholars are emerging. With the emergence of the global economy, perhaps it would be beneficial to make these courses available on an international level.MIT’s Sloan School has several courses on technology strategy and an entire subdiscipline on managing innovation and entrepreneurship. Engineering schools appear to give attention to the social and developmental aspects of new technologies and applied engineering. Graduate and undergraduate students are showing an increased interest in understanding the processes of innovation and technology trade in the globalization of the information economy. This approach will require the merging of multiple disciplines (Grossman they consider the economic incentives inherent in liability regimes with relatively open licensing. If consumers are unclear about the origin of products and cannot determine quality based on appearance, then counterfeit or lower-quality versions of new goods can be sold with false claims. This “lemons” problem is prevalent in lower-income economies.Problems associated with the inability of businesses to put forth the true value of their technologies without worrying about losing those secrets is a central reason for limited flows of international technology transfer. More importance should be placed on the market expansion effects or the market-monopolization effects of IP protection.IP may play a role in supporting the development of contracts that share rents across participants in multiagent enterprises such as films, books, recorded music, networks, and software. Economists do not pay enough attention to this angle of copyrights in favor of analyzing the potential for long-lasting copyrights that limit socially desirable uses of new information. This approach is important to copyrights that apply to cultural, educational and scientific materials (Arora, Fosfuri, Jaffe, Adam, & Trajtenberg, 2002).The issue is important because it can greatly impact areas that are at the heart of educational institutions: research, scholarship, and the transfer of knowledge.It is important to have policies in place before issues arise so they may be dealt with fairly and quickly. It can save all parties time and money that is required for long drawn out lawsuits.According to Gasaway (2002), several changes require new ways of thinking and dealing with these issues. First, faculty are designing and writing for online courses and digital courseware. Educational institutions are questioning if it is their best interest that they hold the ownership of such materials. Second, in addition to the materials being used internally, they may also be used for revenue producing purposes. Due to the complexity of digital materials being created faculty requires the support from the university with technical support such as computer programming, video production assistance, and computer support.The electronic environment is currently forcing educators at all levels to revisit issues concerning intellectual property. Quick availability of information and data through the Internet has changed the way the general public views information, since it is an endless supply through use of computers on anyone’s desktop. A dilemma concerning intellectual property occurs when owners’ rights collide with users’ rights and the public need to access and use resources. Thought-provoking papers about the Internet and intellectual property are becoming available on the World Wide Web.Dyson (n.d.) has written a book, Release 1.0, and several articles dealing with intellectual property on the Internet and the intellectual value of property. An article by Roccia (n.d.) presents an interesting perspective on copyright law in the United States and possible changes or clarifications needed to enhance applicability to the Internet. Current copyright laws in the United States do not quite address the Internet per se because it represents a challenge to existing law and interpretations. Burk (1997) presents a discussion of intellectual property issues and challenges presented by the “electronic frontier.”According to Twigg (2000), most published articles on this topic concur with the following:How can we deal with this issue? According to Gasaway (2002), there are three steps that can be used to put this process in motion.The ideal process of developing a copyright ownership policy must involve representatives of all interested parties. A policy drafted solely by legal counsel with no faculty, staff, or student input will be much less palatable than one a broader group helps draft. It is critical that the process be viewed as fair and that the policy ultimately respects the rights and expectations of all parties, including the institution.Even within traditional works produced by faculty, a copyright ownership policy may differentiate among scholarly publications, artistic works, and instructional materials in assigning copyright ownership. Institutions will most likely want ownership of instructional materials. For example, a college or university may claim ownership if the campus has granted release time to the faculty member in order to develop the instructional materials, or if there is separate payment to the faculty member for course development. On the other hand, the university’s real interest may be in the right to continue using the work within the institution rather than in ownership of the copyright.If the new policy alters the old copyright model then the acceptance of the policy by the campus community is crucial. Faculty must be involved from the start through the drafting and “selling” the policy process. If the drafting committee is chaired or cochaired by a faculty member, all the better, since this may reduce the resistance to a new policy. As the policy nears completion, a draft should be shared with the various governance groups on campus. The faculty senate and faculty members of the drafting group are ideal spokespersons for the policy.Intellectual property issues are very important. They can greatly impact areas that are at the heart of educational institutions: research, scholarship, and the transfer of knowledge. It is important to have policies in place before issues arise so they may be dealt with fairly and quickly. It can save all parties time and money by not having to deal with long, drawn-out lawsuits. According to Gasaway (2002), several changes require new ways of looking at and dealing with this issue. Faculty are designing and writing for online courses and digital courseware. Educational institutions are questioning if it is their best interest that they hold the ownership of such materials. In addition to the materials being used internally, they may also be used for revenue-producing purposes. Due to the complexity of digital materials being created, faculty require the support from the university with technical support such as computer programming, video production assistance, and computer support.
Sharon DeVary (Fri,) studied this question.