Everything you need to know about Copyright and Usage Rights
Copyright Protects intellectual property
Patent: protects inventions
Trademark: protects of specific item or design
Copyright- Ownership of the idea in a visual or audio format. The Copyright owner has the authority to determine how the public uses and views the work. That involves the right to:
- reproduce the work
- prepare derivative works
- distribute copies
- perform the work publicly
- display the work publicly
- perform through digital audio
Public Domain: The public domain consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired,[1] been forfeited,[2] expressly waived, or may be inapplicable
- works created on or after January 1, 1978, have a copyright term of life of the author plus seventy years after the author’s death
- For works made for hire and anonymous or pseudonymous works, copyright protection is 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter.
- For works copyrighted before January 1, 1978, the 1976 Copyright Act retains the system in the previous copyright law—the Copyright Act of 1909 (with a few exceptions)
Fair Use: Fair use is a fact-based doctrine that promotes freedom of expression by permitting the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in certain circumstances. Four factors are considered when making decisions relating to Fair Use:
- Purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes:
- Nature of the copyrighted work: This factor analyzes the degree to which the work that was used relates to copyright’s purpose of encouraging creative expression.
- Amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole:
- Effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work:
Read More Information on Fair Use at Copyright.gov for current Fair Use Guidelines.
Academic Use of Images
The Visual Resources Association (vraweb.org) has prepared a statement on the Fair Use of Images for Teaching, Research, and Study that describes six uses of copyrighted still images that the Visual Resources Association (vraweb.org) believes fall within the U.S. doctrine of fair use.
- Preservation (storing images for repeated use in a teaching context and transferring images to new formats)
- The Use of images for teaching purposes
- The Use of images (both large, high-resolution images and thumbnails) on course websites and in other online study materials
- Adaptations of images for teaching and classroom work by students
- Sharing images among educational and cultural institutions to facilitate teaching and study
- Reproduction of images in theses and dissertations.
Read the full documents:
1. Statement on Fair Use of Images for Teaching, Research, and Study. Visual Resources Association. June 2013
2. Comprehensive list of sources and guidelines on Copyright Law and Fair Use: Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and Copyright
