As mentioned in other sections of this guide, full copyright in a work exists from the moment you hit save, put pen to paper, or paintbrush to canvas. In other words, as soon as what you create is “fixed in a tangible form of expression.” However, you can also officially register your work with the copyright office (starting around $45), and/or simply add a copyright notice to your work (either an open Creative Commons license or a statement like “All rights reserved, [author’s name], [date]."
Highline College faculty should familiarize themselves with Highline College's Copyright Policy (section 902 of the HCEA Contract) when considering copyright on content created as an employee of the college. For questions about the HCEA contract, contact the HCEA leadership.
There are work-for-hire rules in copyright law. A good discussion of work-for-hire rules can be found in the Basics of Ownership section of the Copyright Crash Course from the University of Texas Libraries.
Sources:
"Copyright Crash Course" by Georgia Harper, University of Texas Libraries is licensed under CC BY 4.0
"Creative Commons" by University of Texas Libraries is licensed under CC BY 2.0
United States Copyright Office. Copyright Basics. copyright.gov, 2021.
In copyright, you can both give a right and keep it, meaning licenses can be exclusive or not.
An exclusive license is one where you grant a right to only one person/entity, and then no one else can make use of that right.
A non-exclusive license, however, is pretty much the opposite in the sense that you can grant Person A the right to use a particular work, and then you can grant Publisher B the right, and so on, with the result that they can all exercise that right simultaneously. And you can continue to exercise that right as well; for example, your right of distribution under copyright law.
When working with publishers to license your work, pay particular attention to the licenses you’re working with. In traditional publishing, the author signed over all rights to the publisher, but you can often negotiate to retain some rights. No matter what, keep records of your author agreements.
To learn more, see:
Source: Copyright for Educators & Librarians by Duke University is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
Because a work is copyrighted as soon as it's fixed in a tangible format, all student work is also copyright protected. As educators, we should make sure our students understand this. Further, if we want to use their work as examples in future classes, we should get their permission to do so. Students can either give permission for their work to be used or place an open license (like a Creative Commons license) on their work. The links below include student permission forms which show an easy way to document student permissions.
One easy way to help students learn more about the importance of copyright is to inform students that course content may be covered by copyright, and include a notice of copyright on course materials you use under fair use.