Intellectual Property Policies in Academe: Issues and Concerns with Digital Scholarship

The generation of digital scholarship, through both research and teaching/learning activities, has caused colleges and universities to either create or revise their institutions’ intellectual property policies. Many factors should be considered when crafting a comprehensive and fair policy. This discussion focuses on the relatively new interest by higher education institutions in the copyright ownership of scholarly literary works, which has traditionally rested with the faculty creator. Digital technologies have led to the easy reproduction and commodification of these creations, prompting institutions to rethink their positions. The discussion considers the characteristics of copyrightable digital works, competing interests in the ownership of such works, and the federal legal provisions in place that offer an understanding of copyrights in these contexts. The discussion closes with remarks about intellectual property policies currently used in American higher education institutions. Most colleges and universities have some manner of an intellectual property policy. There is a great deal of variation regarding the scope and formality of such policies, however. Regarding scope, policies range from only addressing the fair use of library materials to addressing both the use and creation of all types of intellectual property that might exist in an academic setting. Some academic organizations merely incorporate a few paragraphs regarding intellectual property in the employee handbook, whereas others have composed comprehensive policies that exist independently from other employment materials. Research institutions began paying attention to the generation of intellectual property in the United States shortly after the transition from the industrial age to the information age. Patentable inventions were the first type of intellectual property to be noticed as commodifiable, and soon policies were springing up in universities to address the issue of ownership and revenue division among interested parties. The 1980 Bah Doyle Act codified the notion that universities have property rights in the inventions of their faculty arising from federally funded research. In the information age, intellectual property has come to the fore. The expression of original ideas is the currency that drives the economy, as well as political and social forces (Sun & Baez, 2009, p. 10). As institutions of higher education are inherently concerned with intellectual property, they have necessarily had to pay attention to the changes in the landscape and adapt accordingly. Hence, almost all universities and colleges now have policies to address intellectual property. Due to the increasing use of digital technologies to develop scholarly works, institutions that have had policies in place for decades have been revising them to address copyright issues previously not considered worth including in