Owing to the COVID crisis, several educational institutions have moved from face to face teaching to online teaching. Institutions and teachers have made several changes to the standard teaching methodology in order to transition to the online environment. While some changes are driven by technology limitations, others are based on intellectual property concerns. As of now, there is no circular, notification, or guideline from the Government of India that provides solutions to the copyright and other IP issues applicable to online education. However, several private initiatives have responded to the need, which have resulted in guides for handling IP issues, free licenses to works governed by copyrights during COVID time and extension of licenses to electronic reproduction, distribution and communication, among others.
Several educational institutions have in fact started establishing their own policies and frameworks to address copyright issues pertaining to their online courses. In the said context, Dr. Kalyan’s presentation on IP in Online Education provides an overview of important IP concepts relevant for educational institutions, faculty and students. With primary focus on copyrights, his presentation delves into copyright protected matter, rights applicable, fair dealing and exceptions, licensing mechanisms and important steps to be taken by educational institutions in the online learning context.
Some basic steps recommended by him include:
- Verify Copyright Protection
- Give Conspicuous Attribution
- Check Fair Dealing/Exceptions
- Check License Terms
- Move to Open Source/CC and other Permissive Licensed Content
- Review Trademark and Publicity/Privacy Rights Issues
- Incorporate Notices – Private Use/Education and Sharing Restrictions
- Include Restrictions on Terms of Use/User Agreements of Online Platforms
- Prepare IP Policies/Guild lines for Faculty and Students
- Designate an IP officer to deal with any IP queries/issues
- Include a COVID related Notice
Please find the Presentation below-
Please write to us at [email protected] in case of any questions or if you would like invite BananaIP r to conduct an online course on IP for your Institution/University.
