Issue link: https://htpgraphics.uberflip.com/i/729690
>>> Case Study... Prof Ashburne wishes to make software, which she has created, available via an educational resource website. The website is subject to an open source licence agreement. Prof Ashburne wants to know whether there are any issues with this under the University's IP Policy and what needs to be done before proceeding. Software is one of the many things automatically protected by copyright. Ownership of that copyright is not waived by the University. The normal rules about commercialisation will apply to it. Prof Ashburne must disclose the software to UMIP by filling in a Disclosure Information Form. Before an open source licence is entered into, she must discuss with her Head of School (her Authoriser) whether this is the best way to put the software into practical use. If Prof Ashburne's research was supported by an outside body, then she also needs to discuss it with UMIP. Prof Ashburne should bear in mind that: > granting an open source licence of the software is likely to allow it to be copied, modified and redistributed by others on a virtually unrestricted basis; > the terms of the various open source licences can be very different. One always needs to check their terms in detail to make sure the licence will not cause problems in the future; > it is worth checking if a patentable invention has been created before making it public (even though software itself is not technically patentable); and > non-open source commercialisation of the software might in fact get the software more widely circulated and used and therefore be of greater benefit to society. WHAT CAN I DO WITH IP THAT I CREATE? 26