Courseware Contracts

Starting with the Right Contract

When faculty members create multimedia courseware products or a telecourse or distance learning materials of some kind for their classes at the University, another institution within the U.T. System, or for the U.T. TeleCampus (from now on, a "Work"), there are a number of important issues that the faculty author and the institution should address before the Work begins:

Who will own this Work?
Who has the right to make what use of it in the future?
What resources will the institution allocate to the Work?
Who will have the right to make or be responsible for updates?
How long should the author and the institution work together to maintain the Work?
If the Work has commercial potential, who should take the lead in marketing and licensing and how should the profits be shared?
Who will stand behind the work and take responsibility if something in the content infringes a copyright or otherwise violates someone's rights?

This form helps create a contract that addresses each of these and other issues. If, however, your campus has a Master Agreement with the UT TeleCampus, rather than use this form, refer to the Master Agreement and its attachments for your starting point.

First, let's choose the right contract as a starting point.

Work-for-Hire?
Joint Ownership?
Faculty Sole Owner?
Contribution to a Collective Work?

Who provided the initial impetus to create the Work?

The University.

UT TeleCampus.

The faculty member.

Both the institution and the faculty member.

Both the UT Telecampus and the faculty member.

We start with two facts to decide whether the institution, the faculty member, or both will own the Work:

Whether the faculty author was asked to create the Work; and
Who will be contributing what copyright law calls copyrightable expression.

The first question is important because when an institution asks a faculty member to create a course, the work can be considered a work within the scope of the faculty member's employment and the institution would own the copyright as a Work-for-Hire.

The second question is important because only those persons who have contributed copyrightable expression can be authors/owners of copyright, except when the employer will be the author/owner under the Work-for-Hire doctrine.

Also, if there may be non-employee contributors whom no one wants to be owners under copyright law, we need to identify them and ask them to sign Work-for-Hire agreements.

Finally, some faculty authors may not wish to own their works, because they consider themselves to be employees working within the scope of their employment. In such a case, the faculty member need only sign an acknowledgement of this unusual circumstance. This election shifts ownership of the affected contribution to the University and causes the standard rules for liability for infringement to control.

Who will contribute copyrightable expression?

University non-faculty employees such as programmers, video crew, support staff, script writers, graphic artists, photographers.

One or more faculty members.

Others who have no employment relationship with U.T. System (including, but not limited to, students).

Will a faculty author choose not to own his/her contribution and instead be considered an employee working within the scope of employment?

Faculty author elects to be considered an employee working within the scope of employment.

Top | Search | Mailto
Agreements: Faculty Sole Owner | Jointly Owned | Work-for-Hire
TeleCampus Funded Contribution to Collective Work
Telecampus Funded Joint Ownership Agreement

Comments to Intellectual Property
intellectualproperty@utsystem.edu
Last updated: August 10, 2001