Why do I need to worry about copyright?

If you infringe copyright, you are breaking the law. Copyright infringement is usually a civil offence but can become a criminal offence where there are aggravating circumstances. As a student or staff member, you are required to follow the university’s Copyright Policy, which states that infringing copyright may lead to disciplinary sanctions.

There are a number of circumstances where you will need to be aware of copyright regulations and how they affect what you can and cannot do. Some examples include:

• If you are copying or scanning from a book, either for personal study or for inclusion in teaching materials (this includes uploading material to Blackboard)

• If you are reproducing somebody else’s work (eg by using a photograph somebody else has taken in a presentation)

• If you are adapting somebody else’s work (eg by using a dataset created by somebody else as the basis for a new piece of work)

Copyright restrictions will not necessarily stop you from doing this entirely, but it will affect how much use you can make of other people’s work and what you need to do in order to make it lawful.

You should also be aware that any new work created by you during your teaching will be covered by copyright. The copyright over teaching materials and other work created by staff as part of their contractual duties is owned by the University. The copyright over work created by students is owned by the students themselves.

When you create work for your own reference or as part of your research, you will be the owner of the copyright unless you have signed a contract with the university or a funder stating otherwise.