NUMBER: 8-5-4 APPROVED DATE: 10-28-2005

LEGAL AUTHORITY: STATE ETHICS ACT S.C. CODE ANN §8-13-100 ET SEQ.; FEDERAL COPYRIGHT ACT 17 U.S.C. §100 ET SQ.

BASED ON POLICY NUMBER AND TITLE: SBTCE POLICY 3-0-100 INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS

SBTCE Policy 3-0-100 Intellectual Property Rights https://www.sctechsystem.edu/faculty-and-staff/policies-and-procedures/policies/3-0-100.pdf

Purpose: To establish guidelines to protect faculty members ownership of intellectual property.

Creation of Faculty Intellectual Property

The College encourages the creation of intellectual property by its faculty.  This creative environment facilitates course development, which in turn enhances student learning.

Faculty members create sophisticated course content and house it in an artifact format (i.e., video, audio, web page, compact disk, printed text, etc.) and use it with or without the creator’s involvement. In order to protect a faculty member’s ownership and protect college resources and the use of those resources, the College and the individual faculty member must adhere to the following agreement. This agreement covers academic content developed within the normal course of employment, using college resources. “Fair use” copyright guidelines apply to this content.

1. Definitions/ Background:
   The Copyright Act of 1976, Title 17 U.S.C. §101 stipulates that employers own works of copyright if “the work prepared by the employee [is] within the scope of his or her employment.” Transfer of ownership is not prohibited.
   
   SBTCE Procedure 3-0-100.1 delegates to college presidents the authority to enter into written property ownership agreements with employees or independent contractors who create original works involving copyrights, patents or other forms of intellectual property for use or ownership by the College.
   
   Intellectual property as defined by SBTCE Procedure 3-0-100.1, is "any product of intellectual activity that is unique, novel, unobvious and/or original, or otherwise subject to copyright or patent protections pursuant to Title 17 or Title 35 of the U.S. Code of Laws."
   
   Faculty positions: Trident Technical College Procedure 8-5-1 (Faculty, Teaching) defines the personnel category of teaching faculty and its specific role within the College.  The term “creator” below refers only to full-time faculty members.
   
   Works are defined as any course-related materials a faculty member creates for a Trident Technical College course using college resources.  Such works include Courses in a Bag, materials for online courses, and course texts.
2. Agreement:
   1. The College may transfer ownership of intellectual property to the faculty member and may grant the following rights:
      1. Ownership of the content and product of all created works that were developed using fair use copyright guidelines.
      2. Right to commercialize a created work, provided that the faculty member does not use college resources to prepare the work for commercialization. Any commercialization must adhere to all federal and state laws and SBTCE and TTC policies and procedures. The faculty member owns all works that the faculty member commercializes in compliance with the above laws and policies.
      3. Right of the faculty member to have first refusal in teaching the course/work he or she has created.  See III.C.3.a.(3) below for course load exception.
      4. Right to use either part or whole of the faculty member’s work in another work.
      5. Right to ensure that a work is not used outside the College without the faculty member’s consent.
      6. Right to use the work at another institution if the faculty member leaves the College.
      7. Right to be acknowledged as a faculty member of the College when establishing one’s professional credentials as the creator of a work.
   2. While actively teaching or administering a created work, the faculty member has the right to:
      1. Ensure that a work is put to a use in keeping with the purposes for which it was produced.
      2. Update course content.
      3. Ensure that no changes are made to a work without the faculty member’s consent, as long as the faculty member is still employed by TTC.
   3. The faculty member will provide to the College the following:
      1. Use of course content, whether part or whole,
         1. for instructional purposes at the College
         2. at no cost to the College
      2. Adherence to all policies, procedures and guidelines related to the following:
         1. conflict of commitment (SBTCE Policies 8-2-100 and 8-2-101, TTC Procedure 8-14-1)
         2. conflict of interest (SBTCE Policies 8-2-100 and 8-2-101, TTC Procedure 8-14-1)
         3. use of the College’s name and logo (See TTC Logo Guidelines).
         4. adherence to copyright law (http://www.copyright.gov/ or Learning Resources Center Policies/Procedures)
         5. personal benefit from projects (SBTCE Policy 8-0-102)
         6. secondary employment outside the technical education system (SBTCE Policy 8-2-101 and TTC Procedure 8-14-1)
      3. Assignment rights:
         1. right of the College to assign the use of a created work (i.e., course) to full-time or part-time faculty upon:
            • the creator’s refusal or inability to teach the course
            • the creator’s departure from the College
            • the College’s need to address faculty load issues at the discretion of the dean
         2.  right of the College to share the work with an SBTCE college upon approval of the faculty creator
3. Exceptions:
   1. The agreement referred to in the preceding paragraph does not apply to following works:
      1. Commercial works created for personal or external party monetary profit.
      2. Commissioned works developed using a “work for hire” written contract.  The contract must clearly stipulate who will own the end product before any development of the work occurs. All part-time faculty members who create a course should sign a “work for hire” contract before beginning to develop the course.
      3. Joint works that, as defined by the Copyright Act of 1976, Section 101, are "prepared by two or more authors with the intention that their contributions be merged into inseparable or interdependent parts of a unitary whole.”  These works are subject to the agreement stipulated above, as long as the creators unanimously agree on the distribution of ownership and use of the work.  If unanimity among the creators is not possible, the College reserves the right to suspend all agreements and make a decision in the best interest of the College.
      4. Collective works, “such as a periodical issue, anthology, [edited work] or encyclopedia, in which a number of contributions, constituting separate and independent works in themselves, are assembled into a collective whole” (Copyright Act of 1976, Section 101). The person who compiles the work is considered the creator of the “collective work” itself. The individual author of the contribution[s] maintains control over his/her part of the compiled work under the agreement stipulated above.
      5. Non-commissioned works developed out of personal interest without college resources. They are developed using the faculty member’s own resources and time. Non-commissioned works differ from commissioned works because the latter are contracted for profit before the work begins. Non-commissioned works may result in profit (ex. selling a painting or sculpture), but they originate in a serendipitous manner. Examples include articles, books, and artistic works.
   2. Interested parties should review the following College and SBTCE policies and procedures:
      1. SBTCE Policy 8-7-101 Secondary Employment Outside State Government.
      2. SBTCE Policy 8-2-100 Secondary State/Dual Employment
      3. SBTCE Policy 8-0-102 Personal Benefit from Projects
      4. SBTCE Policy 8-0-104  and Honorariums and Gratuities and TTC Procedure 8-9-1 Honorariums, Gratuities and Gifts
      5. SBTCE Policy 8-0-105 Ethics Requirements for Employees and Public Officials
      6. TTC Policy 8-9-0 Conflict of Interests/Ethics, Government accountability and Campaign Reform Act of 1991
      7. TTC Procedure 8-14-1 Secondary Employment
      8. TTC Policy 9-5-0 Conflict of Interest: Project Director/Investigator Financial Disclosure Policy

Updated: 06-14-2011

Reviewed: 03-31-2016