COPYRIGHT RESOURCES ONLINE

 The following document consists sections on university copyright resources and on non-university intellectual property resources. The initial links will take you directly to the listed site. This page incorporates work by Eileen Gifford and Janet Erickson, updating the work of Ann Okerson. Eileen Gifford and Janet Erickson, at the time this work was done, were graduate students in the School of Information & Library Studies, U of Michigan and did this work as part of their coursework for ILS Copyright for the Information Professional, taught by Ann Okerson, Associate University Librarian, Yale University.)

 A better option would be to go to the sites through our annotated lists as the information is sometimes difficult to find. The annotated lists make it easier to locate the information pertinent to your needs.
 
 

There are some additional resources added at the end of this document. These include a description of the process of preparing this page and the annotations, as well as five messages sent to the ILS 604 class in Fall 1995 regarding current issues of copyright. 

SCHOLARLY PAPERS

• Crews, Kenneth. "Copyright Law and the Doctoral Dissertation." University Microfilms, Inc. 1992 (ASCII text). Kenneth Crews is Associate Professor of Business Law at San Jose State University.
• Crews, Kenneth D. "Copyright Law, Libraries, and Universities." Working Paper for Presentation to the Association of Research Libraries, October 1992. Kenneth Crews is Associate Professor of Business Law at San Jose State University.
• Demac, Donna. "Property Rights in the Electronic Dawn." REFLEX August/September 1994. Donna A. Demac, attorney, is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Learning Technologies at Columbia University.
• Oakley, Robert L. "Copyright and Preservation: A Serious Problem in Need of a Thoughtful Solution." The Commission on Preservation and Access, Washington, DC 20036, September 1990. Robert L. Oakley is Director of the Law Library and Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center.
• Samuelson, Pamela. " Legally Speaking: Self-plagiarism or Fair Use?" 37 Communications of the ACM 21. August 1994. Pamela Samuelson is a Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh Law School.
• Statement of Robert L. Oakley on Behalf of Several Library and Education Associations before the Working Group on Intellectual Property of the Information Policy Committee of the National Information Infrastructure Task Force, November 18, 1993. Robert L . Oakley is Director of the Law Library and Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center.
• Townsend, Elizabeth. "Legal and Policy Responses to the Disappearing 'Teacher Exception,' Or Copyright Ownership in the 21st Century University," Minnesota Intellectual Property Review: 4 Minn. Intell. Prop. Rev. 209 (2003).

UNIVERSITY COPYRIGHT RESOURCES

• Brigham Young University
• Columbia University

• CIE: Columbia Innovation Enterprise. Statement of Policy on Proprietary Rights in the Intellectual Products of Faculty Activity
• CREDO: Copyright Resources for Education Online; the ILT guide to Copyright.

• CETUS: Consortium for Educational Technology in University Systems (California State University, City University of New York, State University of New York)
• Cornell Law School
• Dalhousie University (Halifax, Nova Scotia)
• Dartmouth College Copyright Ownership Policy
• Harvard University: Statement of Policy in Regard to Inventions, Patents, and Copyrights
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Queen's University
• Stanford University
• Triangle Research Libraries Network
• University of Alberta: Proposed Intellectual Property Policy draft (Oct. 1998)
• University of Arizona Intellectual Property Policy, August 31, 1993
• University of California:

Policy on Copyright Ownership 19 August 1992
Policy and Guidelines on the Reproduction of Copyrighted Materials for Teaching and Research April 1986

• University of Colorado: Technology Transfer and Industry Outreach: copyright primer
• University of Georgia Libraries Copyright Policy
• University of Georgia Regents Guide to Understanding Copyright and Educational Fair Use
• University of Minnesota
• University of North Carolina
• University of Tennessee
• University of Texas
• Washington State University
• Yale University Copyright Policy

 

 
 
 
 
 

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NON-UNIVERSITY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RESOURCES

• Association of Research Libraries
• Association of University Technology Managers
• CANCOPY
• Coalition for Networked Information
• Copyright Clearance Center
• The Copyright Website
• Corporation for National Research Initiatives
• The E-Law Page
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Georgia State Department of Law Unofficial Opinion on Fair Use
• International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA)
• Princeton University Press et al. v. Michigan Document Services (appeals court decision) (dissenting opinion) (Association of American Publishers statement on the case)
• Thomas
• United States Copyright Office
• United States Working Group on Intellectual Property
• "Who Owns On-Line Courses and Course Materials: Intellectual Property Policies for a New Learning Environment"

 

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ANNOTATED UNIVERSITY COPYRIGHT RESOURCES

Brigham Young University

• The BUY Intellectual Property Policy

CETUS: Consortium for Educational Technology in University Systems

The CETUS home page contains the electronic version of Fair Use of Copyrighted Works, put together by the Working Group on Ownership, Legal Rights of Use and Fair Use of the CSU-SUNY-CUNY Joint Committee. It also contains links to fair-use guidelines and other resources that are intended to promote a fuller understanding and appreciation of copyright laws. CETUS partners include SUNY (the State University System of New York, which is composed of 64 campuses enrolling close to 400,000 students), California State University System (the 21 campuses of the California State University System enrolled 325,963 students in fall, 1995), and CUNY (the City University of New York, the nation's leading public urban university, enrolling 213,000 students, 45 percent of them over 25 years of age).

Columbia University

CIE: Columbia Innovation Enterprise. Statement of Policy on Proprietary Rights in the Intellectual Products of Faculty Activity

CREDO: Copyright Resources for Education Online; the ILT guide to Copyright.


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Cornell Law School

This WWW site is maintained by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School. The site provides links to important primary legal sources, including the links shown below. It is a rich web site providing many additional links to primary and interpretative documents.
 
 
• Copyright Law Materials Provided By Cornell Law School, many of which are duplicated by the links below.
• Homepage of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School.
• The U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, as amended (1994).
• U. S. Code of Federal Regulations for the Copyright Office
• Recent U.S. Supreme Court copyright decisions.
• Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.

Dalhousie University (Halifax, Nova Scotia)

This document is the text of several sections of the Dalhousie Faculty Association Collective Agreement which retain broad rights for faculty who produce a work of art or authorship, including software. The terms of this agreement contrast markedly with terms typically put forward by U.S. colleges and universities. This excerpt is dated 1995.
 
 

Queen's University

The Queen's University Copyright Policy was prepared for the university by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries. It is a simple guide for Canada's universities to the complex world of copyright, fair dealing and collective licensing. The document provides a brief review of Canada's copyright law, defines "fair dealing" and discusses what steps should be taken if copying needs fall outside the limits of fair dealing. An explanation of the provisions of the CANCOPY license is also included. The document is dated May 1995.
 
 

Stanford University

The Stanford University Copyright Page provides links to many other sources some having general applicability and some specific to the Stanford University environment.

"Copyright Materials at Stanford" provides access to a wide variety of documents (gopher files) ranging from the text of the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, to several policies and guides created by the Stanford University Copyright Office, to scholarly papers on copyright issues, to the text of the U.S. Copyright Act and sections of the Berne Convention.
 
 

• The "Guide to Copyright Law and Fair Use" was created by the Stanford University and dated October 5, 1995.
• A link to the Stanford University Libraries' homepage is also provided.
• Stanford University's "Policy on Copyrightable Materials and Other Intellectual Property" is available for downloading as a Microsoft Word file.
• The homepage of the Stanford University Office of Technology Licensing
• The 1989 Stanford Research Policy Handbook includes a copyright policy which establishes that "all rights in copyright shall remain with the creator, except in specified cases where law or sponsored agreements require otherwise [and d]efines administrative procedures for policy implementation." The text of this policy is also made available as an Adobe Acrobat file or a Common Ground file at this site. This document is dated September 1, 1994.
• The Stanford University Faculty Policy on Conflict of Commitment and Interest presents and discusses circumstances which can create real or perceived conflicts of commitment and conflicts of interest for faculty [and e]stablishes requirements for annual certifications and financial disclosures. The text of this policy is also available as an Adobe Acrobat file or a Common Ground file at this site. The policy is dated April 14, 1994.


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Triangle Research Libraries Network

The Triangle Research Libraries Network Model University Copyright Policy site contains a model university copyright policy drafted by a joint committee of faculty, librarians and university press editors from Duke University, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The document provides background for and a review of copyright issues in general and particularly those surrounding faculty publication in scientific and technical scholarly journals. The effort to create this model policy is part of a larger effort to develop strategies and plans for cooperative information resources development in the sciences and engineering. The document is dated July 1993.
 
 

University of Alberta

The University of Alberta provides links to a number of documents relating to Canadian copyright law. Included are:
• "Copying Right" is a simple guide for Canada's universities to the complex world of copyright, fair dealing, and collective licensing. This document is dated September 1994.
• "A Guide to Copying at the University of Alberta under the CANCOPY License" was prepared by the Director of Libraries, University of Alberta. The document provides a useful quick "checklist" for copying questions and also more detailed guidance. This document is dated October 1995.

University of California

The UC system has several documents offering policy and guidance on copyright issues.
• University of California Policy on Copyright Ownership 19 August 1992
• University of California Policy and Guidelines on the Reproduction of Copyrighted Materials for Teaching and Research April 1986
• Copyright Considerations for Faculty-Authored Multimedia Instructional Materials UC Discussion Draft, 7 February 1996

University of Colorado

The University of Colorado's site contains two documents. The first, "Policy on Intellectual Property," is a statement clarifying the ownership of intellectual property created by individuals affiliated with the University. "In keeping with long-standing tradition and consistent with academic freedom, the University does not claim rights to textbooks by faculty authors." The document includes a link to the University's "Patent Primer" and provides guidelines on several patent-related questions. This policy statement is not dated.

 The second document at this site is a short policy statement on "Software as Intellectual Property at CU Boulder" which states that "[c]omputer programs and other software written by CU faculty, students, or staff, are treated like inventions. Rights to such software are owned by the University. So, software is treated differently than textbooks written by University faculty, the rights to which belong to the faculty author." This policy statement is not dated.
 
 

University of Georgia

The University of Georgia Libraries Copyright Policy is lengthy document produced by the University of Georgia Libraries. It begins with an introduction to the intent of copyright and continues with a general outline of the law's stipulations about public domain, copyright duration, fair use and library employee liability. The policy statements cover copy services, reserves, document delivery, interlibrary loan, government publications, preservation, photographic services, rare books and manuscripts, nonbook materials, and license agreements. A list of references is also included. This statement is dated July 1994.
 
 

University of Georgia Regents Guide to Understanding Copyright and Educational Fair Use

The University System of Georgia has developed the "Regents Guide to Understanding Copyright and Educational Fair Use." The "Guide", developed by the University System Committee on Copyright, provides examples of fair use and a summary of copyright law. The examples include research and writing, printed material, video and sound recordings, multimedia projects, distance education, and electronic course reserves. Miriam Drake, Director of Libraries, Georgia Institute of Technology and William Potter, Director, University of Georgia Libraries, are members of the Committee.

University of Minnesota

This extensive document, "Interim Guidelines for the Use of Copyrighted Works," was written by Erika Brant, Copyright Administrator at the University of Minnesota. It includes a general introduction to the purpose of copyright. The document also provides guidelines for what kind of use or copying is permitted to teachers for classroom instruction, to librarians for library purposes, and others for various purposes. The categories of materials covered include video and other media, music, computer software, and materials held by the University Library and Archives. This statement is dated June 30, 1995.
 
 

University of North Carolina

This document, entitled, "Copyright Guidelines," includes an extensive explanation of the guidelines for making multiple copies for classroom use of both print and video sources. The explanation focuses on higher education and notes the areas where the "Classroom Guidelines" do not fit well with the needs of postsecondary education. The policy guidelines regarding software based on sections 109(b)(2)(A) and 117 of the 1976 Copyright Act. A sample letter for seeking permission to use a copyrighted work is included in the policy appendix. The document is dated August 1993.
 

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University of Texas

University of Texas Office of General Counsel's Copyright Management Center's site is an especially rich resource. The Center provides guidance and information to faculty, staff and students concerning applicable law and the alternatives available to help accomplish educational objectives. A large number of materials are accessible through the Web site, organized by topic. Some important documents stored directly on the Web server. These are listed below. Extensive links to external sites are also provided.
 
 
• The well organized homepage of the University of Texas Office of General Counsel's Copyright Management Center is designed to provide guidance in the following areas: ownership; registration; software (creation, use, copying and licensing); exemptions from liability for infringement; electronic creation, distribution and use; scholarly publication; and frequently asked questions. Many links to externals sites are also provided.
• The University of Texas System Intellectual Property Policy from The University of Texas System Regents Rules and Regulations. This policy is not dated.
• "Copy right in the University Community," is a collection of articles written by Georgia Harper, attorney for the University of Texas system. The articles deal primarily with academic fair use.
• "Professio nal Fair Use After Texaco," is an analysis of the Texaco case and its implications for scholarly communication by Georgia Harper, attorney for the University of Texas system.
• "Will We Need Fair Use in the 21st Century?" is an essay by Georgia K. Harper, attorney for the University of Texas system.
• Notes on copyright in a number of University-related contexts, including
• library reserve room operations
• securin g permissions and releases for faculty-authored instructional materials
• u se of material obtained from the Internet.


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NON-UNIVERSITY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RESOURCES

Association of Research Libraries

The Association of Research Libraries has information available on its World Wide Web server. These contain a number of relevant documents, including:
• "Fair Use in the Electronic Age: Serving the Public Interest" (1/18/95) is a working document on lawful uses of copyrighted works, developed by members of ARL, ALA, and other library associations.
• "Intellectual Property: An Association of Research Libraries Statement of Principles" (Adopted by the ARL Membership, May 1994). This includes their seven major principles for developing the information infrastructure.
The ARL's general copyright page also includes links to information at other locations.
 
 

CANCOPY

CANCOPY, the Canadian copyright licensing agency, acts on behalf of writers and publishers to grant permission to copy, either on an individual basis with a one-time transactional license, or with comprehensive licenses for high-volume users, such as schools, universities, and governments. This site is useful as a resource on Canadian copyright, helpful in making comparisons with U.S. copyright law.

 The material at CANCOPY's Web site is currently only descriptive. General information on Canadian Copyright and the CANCOPY organization are included, as are details on Post-Secondary Licensing and School Licensing.

Coalition for Networked Information

The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) has a homepage from which you can access both World Wide Web and Gopher materials, with some overlap between the two sources.

 CNI maintains several high quality e-mail forums, including one on copyright and intellectual property, CNI-COPYR IGHT.

 The archives of the e-mail forum are available on the CNI Gopher server. These are organized in folders by month, starting with August 1992 and continuing through the current month.

 The CNI Gopher server also contains a number of miscell aneous documents on copyright, including Terry Carroll's six-part "Frequently Asked Questions About Copyright," which was last updated in January 1994, and

 "Information Policies: A compilation of position statements, principles, statutes, and other pertinent statements" (compiled November 1991). This starts with an introduction from which you can continue through all of the collected documents via arrows at the bottom of each piece. An index button is placed between the forward and backward buttons so you can skip around. These documents are also available at the gopher site.

CNI's READI Guide (Rights for Electronic Access to and Delivery of Information) provides a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of contractual language in the networked environment. It is designed to assist network vendors, suppliers, publishers, and buyers of networked information in their efforts to negotiate effective agreements.
 
 

Copyright Clearance Center

The Copyright Clearance Center, a not-for-profit organization providing collective copyright licensing services, maintains a WWW server with information on licensing services offered to its clients. You must register with the CCC to use their services, and this does include an annual fee. There is additional information on the organization as well as demonstrations of the different online permission services.

 The Academic Permissions Service gives permissions to make academic coursepacks or classroom handouts.

 The Transactional Reporting Service is designed for use by small corporations, individuals, and governments. This reporting service provides immediate authorization to photocopy from over 1.75 million publications.

 The Digital Licensing section is not yet functional. Information on this service is provided.
 

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The Copyright Website

The Copyright Website provides information on the fundamentals of copyright and how copyright law applies to multimedia and to the World Wide Web. It includes examples of some more famous audio and visual copyright infringements, such as outtakes from 2-Live Crew's "Pretty Woman." Fair use examples also take the form of audio materials. Cutting edge issues of Internet hyperlinks, WWW publishing, and the NII are also addressed.

Corporation for National Research Initiatives

Corporation for National Research Initiatives Electronic Copyright Management System

The Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI) is a non-profit research and development organization working in conjunction with the Library of Congress to develop a testbed for registration of copyright material in a computer network environment. This will permit electronic submission of copyright registration and notification of registration in an interactive network.

 The page includes a description of the project as well as charts showing the major subsystems in relation to existing U.S. Copyright Office systems.
 
 

The E-Law Page

The E-Law Page was compiled by lawyer David J. Loundy. It includes the text of his published works, including the following two documents:
• Loundy, David J. "Revising the Copyright Law for Electronic Publication" argues that new technology can be covered by existing copyright law with few modifications. The piece originally appeared in the John Marshall Journal of Computer and Information Law in October 1995.
• Loundy, David J. "E-Law 3.0.1: Computer Information Systems Law and System Operator Liability in 1995" is available in many formats.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a San Francisco-based group dedicated to helping civilize the electronic frontier and make it useful and beneficial to all, not just the technological elite. The EFF's intellectual property resources are available both through the World Wide Web and Gopher. In particular, there are a large number of materials related to intellectual property and the NII, and to intellectual property laws and software. This is the place to find more radical interpretations of copyright law and practice, such as articles on 'is copyright dead'. Several other documents are highlighted below.
 
 
• C ommercial Internet eXchange Association's criticism of the IITF IPWG White Paper on Intellectual Property and the National Information Infrastructure.
• Nation Writers' Union's strong criticism of the IITF IPWG final NII Intellectual Property White Paper (a.k.a. the Lehman Report.)
• John Perry Barlow's article "Sellin g Wine Without Bottles The Economy of Mind on the Global Net" discussing the inappropriateness of traditional conceptions of intellectual property in cyberspace.


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Georgia State Department of Law, Unofficial Opinion on Fair Use

Prepared in response to a request from state legislators.
 
 

International Federation of Library Associations

The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) is maintaining a page of links to selected documents, organizations and national and international laws dealing with intellectual property law, primarily copyright, on their Copyright and Intellectual Property Resources page. The selection of document links is particularly strong, including the following three widely-cited articles, all of which have been published in WIRED magazine:
 
 
• Barlow, John Perry. "The Economy of Ideas -- A framework for rethinking patents and copyrights in the Digital Age (Everything you know about intellectual property is wrong)." March 1994. Written by the executive chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
• Dyson, Esther. "Intellectual Value." July 1995. This article attempts to answer the question 'What happens to intellectual property when it gets on the Internet?'. It was written by the president of EDventure Holdings and editor of Release 1.0, Esther Dyson. The article originally appeared in Release 1.0 in December 1994. It is followed by shorter pieces about software metering and digital watermarks.
• Negroponte, Nicholas. "A Bill of Writes." May 1995. This piece was written as a letter to Newt Gingrich by Nicholas Negroponte at the MIT Media Lab.
Other information at this site includes a Summer 1994 document from the Nolo Press' "Nolo News." Steve Elias' "Cop yrights in Cyberspace," 1994. This is a short, clearly written introduction to important aspects of copyright in the Internet environment. Elias is the editor of Nolo's The Copyright Handbook, written by Steve Fishman.

 This site also has extensive resource lists for Japan, Canada, Europe, and Australia. An important document included from Canada is the "Final SubCommittee Report on Copyright and the Information Highway." The document was prepared by the Copyright SubCommittee of the Working Group on Canadian Content and Culture, itself a part of the Advisory Council on the Information Highway. The recommendations were developed between August and December 1994, with the final report released in May 1995.
 
 

Princeton University Press et al. v. Michigan Document Services

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on 12 February 1996 in favor of Michigan Document Services, an Ann Arbor copy shop which had been sued for its practices involving coursepacks. The text of the court's decision (by a 2-1 vote) is available, along with the dissenting opinion of one justice and a statement by the Association of American Publishers on the case.

Thomas

The United States Congress' Thomas Web site provides speedy access to the bills introduced in the House and Senate. A useful function of Thomas is the ability to search the text of bills introduced in the 104th Congress for terms such as 'copyright.'

 Another place to look on Thomas is in the subject index to the Congressional Record Index for the word 'copyright' as mentioned in the 104th Congress. This index is both browsable with 'copyright' as a subject listing, and searchable with 'copyright' as a keyword.
 
 

United States Copyright Office

The Copyright Office at the Library of Congress has both a World Wide Web site and a Gopher site. A number of relevant materials are available here as ASCII gopher files, including:
• An archive of selected copyright circulars, some are highlighted below.
• "Circular 1: Copyright Basics"
• "Circular 21: Reproduction of Copyrighted Works by Educators and Librarians"
• "Circular 22: How to Investigate the Copyright Status of a Work"
• "Circular 55: Multimedia Works".
• A set of form letters, sent out in response to copyright queries, containing information on major topics within copyright, including Fair use.
• In addition, current Copyright Office Federal Register announcements are available, with archived announcements back to 1993.
The U.S. Copyright Office has a World Wide Web presence through the Library of Congress. Documents that are available through the gopher site are cross-listed here. Additional materials include a how-to page for searching Copyright Office Records through LOCIS. These records date from 1978 and include registration information and recorded documents. The Copyright Office Electronic Registration, Recordation and Deposit System (CORDS), developed in late 1995, is still in the testing stage. Full implementation of the system is planned for 1996, depending on fund availability.

United States Working Group on Intellectual Property

NII "White Paper" Final Report-- Intellectual Property and the National Information Infrastructure

The Final Report of the Working Group on Intellectual Property, a subgroup of the Information Infrastructure Task Force, was released on September 5, 1995. The directory includes the complete document, an executive summary, and the statements of Assistant Secretary and Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks Bruce A. Lehman. In addition, media advisories and press releases are available.

 The preliminary draft of this report, commonly called the "Green Paper," was released in July 1994. It is also available in several formats to view or download from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's WWW Server. Documents are located at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
 
 

Additional Resources

• A document describing the process of preparing this page.
• Copies of five messages sent to the ILS 604 class
• ACM Letter on Copyright
• A SJA Contracts Watch
• EC Funds Study into Unification of World's Electronic Copyright Laws
• Washington Update: Report on White Paper as Legislation
• White Paper Legislation Bound


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