Faculty Course Packets

Protection of intellectual property rights is important to our campus. To facilitate the use of copyright-protected materials in printed course packets, the Campus Printing and Design Center has established a permissions clearance service available to anyone preparing course materials to be sold by the University Bookstore, at no extra cost. The Campus Printing and Design Center will make it easy for you by contacting the publishers for permission to copy material, initiate follow-up phone contact to ensure prompt service, and calculate and pay the proper royalties. The cost of these royalty fees is incorporated in the price of the course pack. 

Most copyright holders charge royalties when granting permission to reproduce copyrighted materials. The cost of royalty payments varies with the content because each copyright holder determines the amount charged. We will contact you when a royalty payment for an item in your course pack is unusually high and offer you the option of removing or replacing the item. If you wish to obtain your own permission, you may do so. Simply include the written permission when submitting your course materials. However, material requiring royalty payments must be processed by the Campus Printing and Design Center if the cost is to be included in the course pack price. 

Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States to authors of "original works of authorship," including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished material. Copyright protection is automatic for any new work of authorship that exhibits minimal creativity and is in a fixed tangible form. Copyright registration and notices, though both beneficial and recommended, are not required under current copyright laws. To learn more about U.S. copyright laws visit the U.S. Copyright Office's website. 

Works in the public domain are not protected by copyright laws and can be used freely. To fall into the public domain a work must have been published prior to 1923 (chronological chart of when works pass into public domain) or been created by an office or employee of the Federal Government. Public domain status is not automatic for products of state governments. 

Fair use (statute) is essentially a limitation on the exclusive rights of the copyright holder to reproduce a protected work. In other words, fair use allows you to reproduce copyrighted material without obtaining the rights holders consent. To determine whether or not a use is indeed "fair", four factors must be considered: the purpose and character of the use, the nature of the work, the amount and substantiality of the work, and the effect of the use on the market. Evaluating the four factors can be very difficult, even the courts rarely agree, as they were purposely written ambiguously to apply to a wide range of applications and scenarios. Therefore, although this exemption can prove invaluable for educational purposes, any adaptation or reproduction of copyrighted works without consent is a risk and caution should be used when claiming fair use. 

We will need a hard copy of your originals or for you to submit electronic files. If you have copyrighted material we will need a list of each item included as well as bibliographic information on each piece. For example:

• Title (of article, journal, or chapter and book)
• Author, Editor
• ISBN (ISSN for journals)
• Publisher
• Year of Publication
• Page numbers of the item to be used 

If your packet does not contain copyrighted material, we will start the process of scanning and printing your materials in our production center. If copyright permissions are necessary, your materials will be sent to our Permissions Specialist, located inside the bookstore, to start the permissions process. Once permission has been obtained we will digitally scan the materials, clean them up and print them in a bound format. Once completed, your packet will be sold on the shelves alongside other materials you may have requested for the course.

Because of processing time, planning ahead is vital. We recommend that copyright clearance requests be submitted by the target dates listed below. The average processing time is 6-8 weeks. Often it is much faster, as is typical with Harvard Business School Case Studies. There are rare occasions where it can take longer than 6 weeks. 

When a publisher or an author will not grant permission to copy their work, it is called a denial. If permission is denied for an item in your packet, the permissions specialist will inform you of the denial and discuss with you available options.

The process of obtaining permission can take a great deal of research. Often the rights have changed hands over the years. The publisher of the source you have found the material in may not be the actual rights holder. If they are not, our permissions specialist must track down who actually owns the rights at present. This can take quite awhile and may happen with one or more items in a course pack. Additionally, the rights holder may not respond in a timely manner, adversely affecting the availability of your materials. Your packet cannot be printed until we have received permission to print all articles. 

Packet permissions must be obtained each semester. They are only granted for a specific number of packets in a given semester. However, if you have used the same course materials with the same copyrighted content we may not need originals again since all course pack materials are scanned and stored electronically so that reprints may be obtained quickly

Ideally two months before the start of classes. This should provide ample time to clear permissions and have the pack printed and on the shelves the first day of classes. Packs may be turned in later but having them by the beginning of class becomes more challenging. If you have turned in your packet early enough and it looks like one or more permission will not be granted in time, we will contact you to review your options. The earlier a packet is turned in the higher the chance of having it available for your students by the first day.