Data copyright, rights management and the use of existing data resources

Managing research data well workshopLondon, 30 June 2009

Manchester, 1 July 2009

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Definitions

Copyright is:• an intellectual property right• something that belongs to someone

Copyright cannot:• be taken away without consent• be abused without the possibility of legal action

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Copyright – The Act

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

Covers:• original literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work• sound recordings, films, broadcasts or cable programmes• the typographical arrangement of publications

Note that: • most research materials e.g. spreadsheets, publications,

reports, computer programs, fall under literary work

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Who owns copyright?

• the author or creator of a work initially owns copyright, as the “first owner”

Except:• where the work is made by an employee in the course of his or

her employment

• where a work is made by an employee in the course of employment, the employer is the first owner of any copyright in the work, subject to any agreement to the contrary

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Who owns copyright?

• if a book has two authors, the copyright will, by default, be owned by both authors

• if a research project has multiple investigators, the copyright is held by all the investigators

• if a research project collects interviews for qualitative data analysis, the individual interviewees will have copyright in the words of their particular interviews

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Copyright in academia

• many academic institutions and some funding bodies waive copyright in research materials and publications and assign ownership to the researchers

• researchers are strongly advised to check the copyright policy employed by their respective institutions. They are not all the same!

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Copyright and data sharing

• it is crucial that all copyright permissions have been granted in advance of formal deposit

• the UKDA acts as a publisher of data. It does not have any intellectual rights in any of the datasets it preserves and disseminates

• if the UKDA preserves data without having explicit permission from the copyright holders, it would be breaking the law

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UKDA Licence Agreement

The UKDA Licence Agreement specifies the rights and responsibilities of both parties and authorises the UK Data Archive (UKDA) to preserve and provide access to the data collection under the terms and conditions specified

http://www.esds.ac.uk/aandp/create/licence.asp

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UKDA Licence Agreement

Depositor responsibilities:

• to ensure that nothing in the data collection is illegal• to ensure that the data does not breach privacy or data

protection laws• to obtain assurances that permission to deposit has been

given• to ensure that the agreement of all parties who may have an

interest in the data collection has been obtained

Details of all parties with a rights interest in the data collection are included in a Schedule appended to the Licence Agreement

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Copyright and data sharing

• researchers must be aware of the implications of copyright ownership

• for projects that create a digital output, copyright should be assigned correctly, and as soon as possible

• especially important where datasets:– have been created from a variety of sources e.g. sources

which have been purchased– have been ‘lent’ by other researchers– include information ‘taken’ from public websites

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Clearing copyright

• in most cases the researcher will need to contact the rights holder (or the rights holder’s estate) and reach an agreement where the terms and conditions can be created in a further agreement or licence

• Note that there are organisations representing copyright owners who may be able to assist. See:

http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy/c-manage/c-ownerorg.htmhttp://tyler.hrc.utexas.edu/http://www.opsi.gov.uk/

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Copyright duration

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Copyright exception, fair dealing

• works are used for non-commercial research, private study, criticism or review

• fair dealing does not infringe copyright provided that the work is sufficiently acknowledged

• this only applies to literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work, not to films or recordings

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Database right

• legally, a database is a collection of independent works arranged in a systematic or methodical way

• may be protected by both copyright and database right

• automatic right and protects databases against the unauthorised extraction and re-use of the contents

• database right protects 15 years from the date of creation or publication

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Moral rights

• in addition to copyright, the creator of a work also holds moral rights which cannot be transferred

• these give the creator the right to be identified as the author of a work and must be asserted by the author in writing

• moral rights typically last the same length of time as copyright

• unlike copyright they cannot be sold to another party (although they can be bequeathed upon an author’s death), but they can be waived by the author

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Publication right

• offers rights equivalent to copyright to a person who publishes previously unpublished materials that have already fallen out of copyright

• rewards the creative effort in editing another research work

• creating and publishing a database based on unpublished historical source material which is not in copyright will give the creator a publication right

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Summary• ensure that you know who holds the rights in the sources

before you use them

• strongly recommend researchers to negotiate the sharing of derived data with the source owners at the time of acquisition/purchase

• check your institution’s copyright policy

• for deposit, include all parties with an intellectual property right in the work on the Schedule

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Contact

• Acquisitions@essex.ac.uk• http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/sharing/copyright.asp

• http://www.cla.co.uk/• http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/services/elib/papers/other/jisc-tltp/

jisc.pdf• http://www.web2rights.org.uk/

• Padfield, T. (2007) Copyright for Records Managers and Archivists, London: Facet Publishing, 3rd ed.