Intellectual Property#
This section covers material related to Intellectual Property (IP).
It is important to be aware of IP concerns to make sure our our stakeholders, such as funding agencies, the taxpayer, the University and the scientific and software communities can benefit from our work and to avoid improper use of the work of others. Correct handling of IP is an element of Research Integrity and Best Practice at University of Galway.
Unless otherwise specified or agreed the material we produce while working at ICHEC is the IP of the centre and by extension the University of Galway.
This section gives an overview of media and documentation licensing.
Copyright for media and documentation#
The creation of media and documentation requires resources - someone’s time and effort. In most countries there is a Copyright system in place to allow creators or innovators to benefit from their investment, if they choose to. Copyright is usually implicit - even if you able to download an image or document from a public place with no other information on its provenance, its creators or licensors still own copyright overs its reproduction.
Including media from elsewhere#
If you reproduce media that you have not created yourself you need to be aware of the conditions on its reproduction. The copyright holder may not permit reproduction at all - in which case they may pursue damages if you reproduce it in any works beyond a jurisdiction-dependent definition of ‘fair use’. ‘Fair-use’ conditions can be vague and may require a court case to establish - so there can be a risk in depending on them.
Some typical sources of media will be:
A library in software - for example ‘clip-art’ in Word or Powerpoint, which may give specific terms of use for the media.
Media repositories such as Shutterstock for photographs where you can purchase a license to use media under certain terms.
Direct contact with authors - who may give qualified or global permission for re-use
An institutional library, such as a University of Galway or ICHEC database, which should have clearly marked redistribution terms.
Web searches or an informal online discovery. It can be challenging to establish provenance and licensing terms in this case.
Creation of media yourself, either derived from other media or ‘from scratch’
It can be challenging to have confidence that you are abiding by the intended terms of media redistribution licenses in many scenarios. One way to ease this is to try to use media licensing under a widely used and well known license. The Creative Commons organization and its licenses are a good way to to consume and produce media where you can have confidence in the terms of use - and when license directions are correctly followed by reproducers - a full provenance trail for works.