Faculty/Staff/Student Investigators

Copyright FAQs

What is a copyright?
What may be copyrighted?
Who owns copyright in works of university authors?
What are the criteria for a copyright?
What constitutes fair use of copyrighted works?

What is a copyright?
A copyright is a monopoly that gives the owner the right to prevent others from unauthorized use of an original work of authorship by duplication, preparation of derivative works, distribution, or public performance.
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What may be copyrighted?
The subject matter of copyright is original works of authorship, including literary and musical works, mask works for computer chips, graphic works, sound recordings, and works of art. Computer programs do not have a separate category and are evaluated in part as literary works, an unnatural fit that sometimes leads to practical problems.

Copyright applies only to an author's original expression, not ideas, since ideas belong to the public and may not be monopolized. The idea-expression distinction explains why an original text on plane geometry may be copyrighted, though earlier copyrighted works presented identical ideas. Similarly, anyone can freely use data from a copyrighted book listing melting points of chemical compounds, since empirical data are considered ideas. Unauthorized photocopying of pages from the same book might be copyright infringement, however, because it appropriates the author's selection and organization of data, and the layout of pages and headings, all of which might be original expression.
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Who owns copyright in works of university authors?
Ownership of copyrights in works written as part of university responsibilities depends on the nature of the work. In keeping with academic tradition, copyrights in textbooks or other works of a primarily pedagogical or scholarly nature vest with the faculty author. Copyrights in faculty works of a commercial nature, such as a computer program that optimizes a telephone network, would belong to the university, at least in part, if the works were developed using university resources or developed under a university managed Sponsored Research Program. Royalty revenue from university licensing of copyrights is shared with faculty authors of the work and their research groups and administrative units.
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What are the criteria for a copyright?
To be copyrighted, material must be original and fixed in a tangible medium of expression.

Unlike patented inventions, there is no requirement that a copyrighted work be novel in the sense that nothing identical previously existed. The criterion of originality is met if a work is the author's own, not copied from another source.

Prior to 1978, authors were required to adhere to certain formalities (register works with the U.S. Copyright Office, use © notice on works) to obtain full protection, but since a revised federal statute became effective on Jan. 1, 1978, copyright now exists in an original work of authorship as soon as it is fixed in a tangible medium of expression such as a manuscript, audio tape, or computer file. For works created after 1978, former statutory requirements such as copyright registration and use of the copyright mark, ©, are now useful mainly as prerequisites to infringement proceedings to enforce copyright or recover damages for unauthorized use.
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What constitutes "fair use" of copyrighted works?
Although copyright allows authors to prevent unauthorized use of an original work, there are exceptions. Limited copying for the purpose of criticism, comment, teaching, scholarship, or research is usually not an infringement of copyright. For example, copying one chapter from a book for a teacher's personal use would usually not be infringement, but copying the entire book may be. Spontaneously making multiple copies of a section of a copyrighted work for immediate classroom use might not infringe, but it might be infringement to copy for classroom distribution the same section year after year, or to make multiple unauthorized copies when there was time to secure permission of the copyright holder.

The above description of fair use is intended only as a guideline. The boundary between fair use and copyright infringement is not sharply defined, even for those familiar with the copyright statute. Those in doubt should consult a campus intellectual property officer or university counsel.
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