Members have expressed concerns regarding the recording of lectures by the University.
This is a complex area in law and there is very little case law. Therefore, we cannot give a definitive answer. There are several questions to consider:
- Who owns the intellectual property (IP) rights to the lecture?
- Does recording of lectures breach the IP rights of those whose material is used to create the lecture?
- How are confidentiality issues covered e.g. when patient or personal case information is shared by teacher or students?
- If recordings are re-used, are there any risks that they will be outdated? Will the academic retain control over re-use?
Ownership of IP
Swansea University’s policy states:
SWANSEA UNIVERSITY’S POLICY ON INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
The Creator shall own the copyright in teaching materials, academic and other publications (books, articles etc), theses and dissertations, lesson plans and learning modules except where they are comprised of original computer software, details of an invention or other commercially exploitable information or know-how not in the public domain, or when the materials have been specifically commissioned by the University or in circumstances where Clause 6 is applicable and the University is contractually required to own the copyright. Available here (top result)
Performers’ rights over recorded lectures are likely vested in staff
However, copyright of material produced in the course of employment can be claimed by employers.
Risks of transferring material from traditional teaching to online sources
Creation of original ‘material’ creates IP rights but the extent of these rights is a hugely complicated area, often due to differing national and international laws and also the matter of whether any agreements/permissions (for use of materials by others) are in place. This has been commonly acknowledged e.g. Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) is a generic term that relates to … claims for ‘ownership’ of a resource – whether registered or unregistered. Issues around ownership, trust, provenance, attribution and risk are all aspects of IPR that can present significant barriers to open sharing or release of learning materials. (See link)
Librarians should be able to advise on commonly available agreements in place relating to sharing academic materials, and guidance is available
Recording may give rise to copyright, quality and confidentiality issues: lecture content may contain information on patients or personal cases; students may ask questions about individual cases which they would not wish to share outside their peer group; slides may contain images which are copied for single use in teaching e.g. data from someone else’s research paper (this is fine to show in a lecture, but not to transfer onto another platform); content will date. The author should at least check that material is not outdated before anything is re-released. If the author is not available, then re-using the lecture will lead to quality issues.
Swansea University lecture recording policy is available:
It states:
Swansea University expects staff and students to comply with all applicable UK & European copyright legislation. Staff should ensure they have the appropriate copyright clearance for any material covered within the recording. Further advice is available via openaccess@swansea.ac.uk and guidance and training materials can be found on the SALT website.
This places the onus on individual academics to check everything said or used on slides in a recorded lecture and online materials. Many academics are not experts in the extremely complicated area of IP. UCU would like the University to take full responsibility for any breaches of IP law which may result from the use of lecture recordings, as it would be totally unreasonable of management to expect staff to become IP experts in this extremely complicated area.
Swansea University UCU 