Introduction to this special issue: Faculty intellectual property in the digital age

Prior to the third generation of distance education that is described as telelearning (Taylor 1995) or teleconferencing (Moore and Kearsley 1996), there were few questions about the ownership of a faculty member’s intellectual property. It was extremely rare for an institution to claim ownership of a professor’s class materials whether lecture notes, flip charts, overhead transparencies, audio and video recording, monographs, handouts or tests. With the advent of Internet-based distance education delivery systems including 2-way audio and video as well as online courses, the issue of intellectual property ownership has grown complex. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) states ‘‘The materials created by faculty members for distance education courses should be treated in exactly the same fashion as materials created by faculty members for traditional courses’’ (AAUP, n.d.). This statement implies that ownership of course materials used in teaching a course delivered via distance education should be treated the same as a traditional face-to-face classroom course, that is, the faculty member owns the materials. In contrast, the American Association of Universities (1999) states ‘‘...the university should own the intellectual property that is created at the university by faculty.’’ University distance education policies, however, view ownership of distance education materials differently than traditional classroom materials. The distance education policy at California Polytechnic State University (Calpoly Polytechnic State University, n.d.) states that faculty must negotiate with the university for ownership based on current policies and contracts. The University of Nevada Las Vegas (n.d.) and Buffalo State University (n.d.) policies state that the university and faculty member are joint owners of the materials if university