This guidance document is intended to highlight some of the most common topics related to licensing of PSU owned copyright works. Students, faculty, and staff are encouraged to read the full PSU Copyright Ownership Policy to determine their rights and obligations when authoring copyright materials. For general information about Copyright, please check our Copyright Primer and “What’s Copyright?” for some useful background. Authors who need guidance regarding potential PSU ownership of their copyright works or who would like to discuss options for licensing should contact Innovation & Intellectual Property (IIP).
GOALS AND PURPOSE OF LICENSING COPYRIGHT
The purpose of the PSU Copyright Ownership Policy is to promote PSU’s scholarly, academic, and service missions by creating a framework for the ownership and disposition of copyright works, define the rights and obligations of the authors of those works, protect the academic freedom of PSU faculty, and to ensure that PSU can meet its obligations to granting agencies and other third parties regarding copyright ownership and licensing.
IIP’s goal is to license PSU Copyright Materials in counsel and partnership with PSU authors to enable greater impact of their copyright works. Copyright licenses are granted for a fee, most of which is distributed by IIP to help the authors, department, program, and/or college to support the mission of PSU. The PSU Royalty Distribution Policy related to authors of copyrighted works can be found at PSU Adopted Policies 20-01, section 2.
OWNERSHIP
Under the PSU Copyright Ownership Policy, there will be PSU-owned copyright works where the authors have full control over the grant of rights and licensing of their work as long as proper attribution is made. IIP acts as a resource for these authors to aid in navigating licensing options and structures for attribution; we encourage authors to consider using Creative Commons or Open Source licenses when distributing their work if these are applicable. At a minimum, PSU employees have a responsibility to properly attribute by marking with “© Portland State University” any copyrighted works that they create which should be assigned to PSU but which will not be licensed to third parties for monetary compensation; in these cases, IIP will consider proper attribution on the work rather than physical disclosure to IIP to be sufficient to fulfill any disclosure requirement.
Students at PSU own their own copyrights, except in cases where the copyright works are developed in the student’s capacity as an employee or as part of a sponsored project. In cases where students are unsure whether PSU may have rights in their work, we recommend that they discuss with their supervisor/advisor, preferably in advance of authoring the work, to determine their rights and responsibilities. If the situation is unclear, please contact IIP for advice.
To reduce paperwork and policy compliance burden on authors who do not wish to use their works for commercial purposes and are not required to disclose their works due to a sponsored project or other separate agreement, PSU allows the authors of these works to decide on how they would like to grant PSU’s copyrights to third parties (and not requiring that you tell IIP about it) as long as there is no money involved and as long as PSU is properly attributed. Although not required, these works may still be disclosed to IIP, and IIP remains a resource to the PSU community to discuss the licensing and management of these works. If you have a copyright you would like to disclose or determine ownership, please contact us directly.
DISCLOSURE
In cases where copyrighted works should be PSU-owned by policy or for which there will be or may be rights licensed to third parties in exchange for compensation, PSU requires disclosure to IIP through the Inventor Portal. Typically works owned by PSU will have used significant university resources, will have been under a separate agreement with the author(s), or will be related to a sponsored project or other agreement with a third party.