How does intellectual property impact the creativity and research outputs of doctoral researchers? CREATe team member, Amy Thomas (RTA, Copyright Evidence Wiki Sub-Editor), explored this question in a webinar supported by Vitae and IPO, and in collaboration with the Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities (SGSAH) on 23 March 2020. The webinar considered two main facets of intellectual property: first, how the law recognises and protects creativity, and; secondly, how researchers can exploit that creativity effectively.

The webinar began with a presentation by Mario Moustras (Leadership & Talent Development Coach), who provided an overview of the main types of intellectual property, whilst delving deeper into particular concerns about copyright protection of creative products and research outputs. Mario’s presentation was followed by applied case studies by Claire Squires (Director, SGSAH), Amy Thomas (CREATe) and Colin Kirkpatrick (Senior Knowledge Exchange Manager, Glasgow School of Art) to demonstrate how copyright can be used in context. Claire provided valuable knowledge on publishing concerns for researchers, whilst Amy and Colin illustrated more specific case examples of Arts & Humanities students exploiting their creative outputs ‘in real life’. Continue reading →

The European Copyright Society (ECS), a group of prominent European scholars, has published two opinions on the implementation of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market into national law: the Opinion on Implementation of Article 14 and the Opinion Addressing Selected Aspects of Implementing Article 17.

Member States have till 7 June 2021 to transpose the Copyright Directive into their national laws. Article 17 is among the most controversial and most complex provisions of the Copyright Directive. To date, none of the Member States implemented this provision. You can check the current state of the Copyright Directive implementation on the CREATe’s resource page available here, and read our previous blog post on the transposition of article 15 here.

In its opinion, the ECS calls article 14 “a remarkable provision which, for the first time in the EU, grants a positive status to works belonging to the public domain, by prohibiting any regaining of exclusivity therein”. The opinion considers objects covered by article 14 (works of visual art), rights which the provision cuts back on (with emphasis on related rights), non-original reproductions (reproducing the original faithfully), as well as the temporal dimension of the provision. Several CREATe academics and fellows signed the Opinion.

The core aspects of article 17 discussed in the ECS’ opinion include: the definition of the online content-sharing service providers (OCSSPs); licensing and moderation duties of the OCSSPs; copyright limitations supporting the transformative and user-generated content; configuration of complaint and redress mechanism; the possibility of implementing direct remuneration claims for authors and performers; and the private international law aspect of applicable law.

The full text of both opinions is available here on the European Copyright Society’s website.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our way of living and working. We want to remind everyone who is adapting to online working – including teachers and students, creators, cultural heritage practitioners, and other ‘copyright users’ – that all the resources available on CopyrightUser.org are distributed under a Creative Commons-Attribution licence. This means that you are free to use all the original materials you find on the website, such as texts, videos, animations and illustrations, for any purpose, under the only condition of crediting the author of the work.