Copyright & Intellectual Property: Permission & Ownership

If none of the exemption applies to your case at hand, you may need to obtain a permission for your use from the copyright owner.

When the copyright owner is unknown, the information may be retrieved by using the Search Copyright Information database provided by the U.S. Copyright Office. It is listed under “Copyright Claimant” in the bibliographic record. To seek permission for the use of a library reserve, the library uses the template (see below) is used. In many cases, locating the copyright owner or getting response is very difficult. When necessary, payment will be made with the Copyright Clearance Center. The Copyright Clearance Center allows users to pay the respective publishers.

In general, students and faculty retain copyright ownership or the right to assign it to a distributor of their choice.

Non-faculty staff and student employees do not have copyright ownership of items made in the course of fulfilling their job requirements. Those items are considered work-for-hire and the university holds the copyrights to them.