Intellectual Property
The goal at UNT is to work fairly with faculty who are willing to dedicate their expertise and energy to the design and delivery of their courses through distributed learning. The resources under this category provide access to the officially adopted intellectual property policy, a downloadable worksheet to help faculty and department chairs determine what policy category their courses might fall under, downloadable agreement templates to be used to create a legal document for the appropriate category before production begins, and a learning objects addendum to enable the reusability of smaller portions of a course with the permission and citation of the author.
Note: In cases in which a faculty member adopts digital publisher content and these materials consitute the majority of the online course content, the faculty member should submit a Use of Digital Publisher Content in an Online Course 
in lieu of an IP agreement.
Policies
- Intellectual Property Policy (view online)
- Intellectual Property Worksheet to determine the category of a course (pdf)
Agreement Templates for Courses
- License Agreement Category I (pdf)
- License Agreement Category II (pdf)
- License Agreement Category III (pdf)
- License Agreement Category IV (pdf)
Negotiating Royalties
When negotiating the percentage rate for calculating royalties (to be used in the educational license clause of the IP agreements excluding the department-owned category), the department chair represents the interests of the University and the faculty member represents their own personal interest. The two parties have a shared interest in creating high-quality, reusable online course materials using a reasonable distribution of resources to accomplish this. Hence, the primary negotiation point becomes what is a reasonable distribution of resources? The following suggestions are provided to help the department chair and faculty author in this discussion: “Things To Consider When Negotiating Royalties”
Calculating Royalties
Please use the spreadsheet for calculating the royalties to be paid a faculty member according to the terms of a particular intellectual property agreement OR to determine the dollar amount for an instructional course fee to be placed on a course where a royalty payment will be due (if the department chooses to use this source to fund royalty payments). When determining the amount of a course fee, be sure to use the spreadsheet associated with the academic year when the course will be delivered.
- AY 2016-2017 Royalty Calculation Spreadsheet (effective through Summer 2017)