Myself, Coding, Ranting, and Madness

All Your Coursework Are Belong To...Who? Part II

Missed Part I? Read it here

Well, a month later and Imperial College Registry still haven't replied to my email, excepting the automated receipt of my question. But, as pointed out by a fellow student1 as Imperial, I didn't do enough digging of the information already available to me. The Intellectual Property Policy2 for Students at Imperial falls under the Research Support section of the website which, in retrospect, makes a lot of sense: most of the intellectual property will be generate in research. This also

The policy itself appears to be reasonable, with all of the IP remaining with the student 'in their own right', except in certain cases:

1. They hold a sponsored studentship under which the sponsor has a claim on the arising IP; or
2. They participate in a research programme wherein the arising IP is committed to the sponsor of the research; or
3. They generate IP which builds upon existing IP generated by, or is jointly invented with College Employees or Associates; or
4. They are, or have the status of, College Employee (in which case they are treated by College and the law as employees).

In situations (iii) and (iv) above, students will be required to assign that IP to College, and in respect of revenue generated by that IP, the student will be treated on the same basis as College Employees under the Reward to Inventors Scheme.

This first and second point are, in many regards, almost an extension of the rights of employers over content created by their employees in the course of the employee’s normal duties, and is to be expected. The fourth is acceptable, if not entirely fair (a number of the students at Imperial work there in various capacities at different times, although generally outside of their term times). The third condition is the only one which bothers me at all; under normal circumstances, the other components would be used under their licenses, rather than the rights of the derived work being held by a modules owner.

Of course, there are ways to side step the college monetising the work in a variety of cases. As I suggested in the earlier post, programmers need only include a module licensed under GNU GPL, which forces derived works to be open sourced. There are some analogues into other fields, allowing things to be released freely. Of course, also on that page is a review of the way in which any money made from commercialisation of rights is split, and they do seem to be quite reasonable about that too. Not that any of my projects are likely to make half a million pounds...

The other section of interest is the notes on copyright

Copyright

In keeping with normal academic custom College generally waives its claim to copyright in teaching materials, textbooks and research publications. In these circumstances, individuals may publish these works to their own benefit. College will automatically receive an implied worldwide royalty-free licence in perpetuity entitling it to use all such materials for the purpose of research and teaching by College itself, in all media. It is the responsibility of the individual to make any publisher, or any other party interested in the publication of such material, aware of this licence.

This discretionary copyright waiver does not extend to works specifically commissioned by College or to other copyright protected works arising from research such as computer software, databases or other copyright materials with commercial potential.

1. 1 ↑ James Elford, @jelford
2. 2 ↑ The 'public access' link on this page points to a pdf copy of the policy, ~40kB