Intellectual Property Rights

Even though you may envision your course being much better if you could use a certain piece of media, you need to keep in mind that you can face liability issues if you don’t obtain proper legal permissions to include them in your eLearning program.

Many of us use images to enhance our eLearning content. However, most of us may not be aware of the copyright issues that are hidden behind the act of “click and save picture as”, especially when we see the word “Free”. We should be aware of what this word really means each time before we fall into any legal issues.

You loved that picture of a grumpy cat. But are you allowed to use it? Make sure your company/clients are protected from liability by carefully respecting copyright and intellectual property laws.

Your educational materials are often unique, may have taken years to put together, and are invaluable to your work and your students. But are you limiting yourself by treating them as property? Can you compete with the free content revolution taking place online?

When eLearning content designers create material for their courses, they invest considerable amount of time, skill, effort, and money into its production. If you are an independent designer, or running your own eLearning consulting business, you have much more at stake in your creations. As a result, there is often an implied understanding of “ownership” for the content. However, oftentimes content created through your toil and labor can be surreptitiously copied and used by someone else; depriving you not only of acknowledgement of ownership, but also of potential material and financial benefits that may have accrued to you. Copyright aims to put an end to such “misappropriation” of content that lawfully belongs to you. In most cases (though there are limitations and exemptions) such protection grants the original creator the right to own the content, and decide who can use, share or disseminate it. In this article we will talk about copyright protection in eLearning. We will also go over some useful tips to consider when dealing with copyrighted content.

Copyright ownership of eLearning courseware and materials has increasingly attracted the interest of educators, researchers, and companies that develop learning systems and publish online course materials and course ware.  Technology provides the potential for collaborative interaction and learning opportunities for geographically dispersed persons and groups (Biström, 2005; Edwards et al., 2002). The effective use of eLearning course and instructional materials has proven to be useful in diverse educational settings worldwide. In light of the complexity and expense of the resources involved in developing online course materials, many institutions are revisiting their intellectual property policies to clarify how they apply to online educational materials.

Copyright has been an engine for creativity for more than three centuries. Its history is one of continuous evolution in the face of technological change. In today's global environment, eLearning practitioners have unprecedented opportunities to disseminate their creative works and products to a worldwide audience. At the same time, they face daunting challenges as to what materials are protected legally and what kinds can potentially open them up to legal risk. As engagement in eLearning continues to grow, a workable understanding of local and international copyright issues especially regarding its protection and encouragement is essential.

eLearning professionals are increasingly creating educational materials that are offered on a wide scale, globally. With this dynamic frontier of content delivery, emerge questions and concerns about intellectual property rights among content developers and providers. Questions such as who owns the digital materials and content that I create and post online? What are institutional or organizational limits of ownership to my e-materials and digital products?, Can I patent my work and what are organizational implications? Do I have the right to use content for eLearning courses that is easily downloadable and found on the worldwide web at another organization? This article addresses intellectual property rights related to the field of eLearning and discusses its implications for eLearning practitioners.

Several eLearning professionals wonder "what happens with the eLearning content they create for a company"? Do eLearning developers have the right to maintain copyrights and reuse their eLearning work or their employer is its sole owner?