Education and training institutions create, use and deal with intellectual property (IP) every day. As such organisations are centres of learning. This is not surprising. What is surprising is that despite how critical IP assets are to their business and operations, institutions deal with them at a very basic level; it seems to be sufficient to most that students (and teachers!) know they cannot copy materials without limit.
At great risk many institutes neglect to ensure that policy and practices are in place to deal with issues such as
- Who owns the curriculum and training materials developed?
- Are contracted tutors employees of the organisation?
- Are institutions liable for the IP abuses of their students and staff?
- What happens if copyright works created by staff and students, sometimes outside the institute, are commercialised?
- Who should have access to the database of students and key contacts?
- What happens when you get a letter claiming infringement of IP?
This course is designed to raise for discussion how institutes can put in place policy and good practices that can help address such concerns with a focus on the main forms of copyright and confidential information.
At the end of this course, participants should be able to:
- Recognise IP in an organisation and the scope of protection available;
- Identify copyright & confidential information issues that may arise in dealing with employees, external service providers, collaborators, and students;
- Understand and manage the risks involved in dealing with their own and 3rd party IP.
