Intellectual Property Policy

Guidance

Examples of Department intellectual property
Department intellectual property includes, but is not limited to, guidelines, instructions, books, policies, reports, research papers, content on CDs, DVDs, film, video, webpages, social media posts, original teaching resources, educational programs, assessments, school policies and plans; in hardcopy or electronic form.

Ownership
Under the Copyright Act 1968, the Department (as the employer) owns the copyright in material created by its employees in the course of their duties unless otherwise agreed between the Department and employee.

Where the nature of employment duties results in Department employees working outside normal work hours, any intellectual property created that relates to those duties will be owned by the Department.

It is not so much the ‘when and where’ that determines the rights but the nature of the employment duties and whether the intellectual property in question is related to those duties.

An employee creating intellectual property outside of normal work hours, that is not related to their employment duties with the Department, retains the copyright.

Moral rights and attribution of authorship
The Copyright Act provides that it will not be an infringement of an author’s moral rights if it was reasonable in all the circumstances not to attribute the author. The matters to be taken into account in making a determination include:

• the nature of the work
• the purpose for which the work is used
• the manner in which the work is used
• the context in which the work is used
• any practice, in the industry in which the work is used, that is relevant to the work or the use of the work
• whether the work was made in the course of the author's employment.

The Department as employer is generally entitled to determine whether to publish a work, alter a work, or attribute a work created by an employee in the normal course of their employment with the Department.  In most organisations it would be impossible for the employer to observe a moral right of an employed author, as it would involve detailed assessment of the history of every work created, and dialogue with every contributor to that work.

Employees who wish to claim their moral rights should address their reasons in writing to their line manager.

The Department may recognise outstanding or extraordinary work of an employee by acknowledging their authorship of a work, however this is not recognition of moral rights unless the work is subject to an agreement in writing detailing moral rights.