Copyright for Undergraduate & Masters Students

Answer

Copyright ownership

King’s makes no claim to the copyright of work you create in the course of your studies, such as essays, coursework, podcasts, presentations etc. The copyright is yours as the creator, unless and exceptionally you are working on a research project with researchers at King's, and/or what you create is commercially valuable. If your work is likely to have commercial value, rights should be assigned on an equity sharing basis. See the College Code of Practice for Intellectual Property, Commercial Exploitation and Financial Benefit.

Collaboration and external funding

If you are collaborating on a piece of research being run by academics or researchers working for King’s it may be that the work you contribute to producing will be regarded as owned by the university. Please speak to your supervisor or the primary investigator on the project for more information.

If you are in receipt of external funding your funder may have a claim in the outputs that you produce. Check your funding agreement for details.

Protecting copyright

Ideas themselves are not subject to copyright, it is their expression in a defined form that is e.g. print, digital, audio etc. Copyright exists automatically as soon as you have created something original in a fixed form. If you wish to assert your copyright in a piece of work you should mark it with © symbol and the date e.g. ©2020, as recommended by the Intellectual Property Office. While, this affords you some protection in law it does not guarantee it.

Sharing your work

You are advised to read carefully the guidance on social media sharing websites such as Twitter, Instagram and Flickr before sharing your work and asserting your right to be identified as the copyright owner. Think about what use you would find acceptable. As you will be aware this is a rapidly changing landscape and some sites are asserting the right to reuse material uploaded without permission. In other environments you might wish to consider utilising a Creative Commons license, to share your work.