Cc-uk mailing list

[Stuart Yeates <stuart.yeates AT computing-services.oxford.ac.uk>]

David M.Berry wrote:
> 
> Actually this is completely untrue. Academics *technically* do not own
> the copyright to their own work as they are designated as employee's of
> the University, as I am sure you are all well aware, therefore the
> employer owns their intellectual property. The whole situation of
> academics copyright is little discussed or resolved in the UK and I
> expect this to be a flashpoint should the Universities decide to
> capitalise on IP beyond patents. My University, for instance, is very
> clear that it owns the IPR but has chosen not to enforce it on
> copyright... yet...
> 
> Therefore again *technically* releasing under a CC license without the
> permission of the employer (i.e. the owner of your academic work, the
> University) is illegal.

There are some academics (and non-academics in academic
institutions) who are working on projects which require outputs to
be released under a particular licence (or class of licence) as a
condition of funding.

For example all projects funded by the JISC e-learning program [1]
are required to release the software as open source and the JISC
funded OSS Watch [2] releases all public outputs under the free
documentation licence.

In the majority of these cases the university is aware that these
are being released under open licences and is happy for that to happen.

[1] http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=programme_edistributed
[2] http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/

cheers
stuart
-- 
Stuart Yeates        stuart.yeates AT computing-services.oxford.ac.uk
OSS Watch                              http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/
Oxford Text Archive                         http://ota.ahds.ac.uk/