Slide 1

COPYRIGHT 04-07 July 2007 Rome / ITALY Slide 2 opyright Copyright agreements are extremely important when planning the dissemination of results of educational projects. If proper agreements are not made then project partners may go as far as to prevent the dissemination of the project results. A considerable share of the results of the EU training programmes prior to the LdV have been shelved because the copyrights had not been agreed on in time. Copyright is a personal right, that of the author of the work. Slide 3 The use of the copyright sign has no legal significance.. although it is recommended for informative reasons. In an International development project the copyright remain with those working partner organizations that are engaged in producing new training material. Copyright only concerns the form of presentation, not the information, ideas, topics, principles etc.. Copyright covers the text or illustrations, not the thoughts or ideas. Slide 4 ontent Copyright is an exclusive right of the author to make decisions concerning the work produced. The rights can be divided into two groups: Moral rights and Economic rights. The moral rights include the right to be mentioned as the author when the product is used, i.e., the author of a book always has the right to be mentioned. Economic rights include the right to decide on the preparation of the work, no matter what technique is used, and the right to make it available for the public, i.e., by distributing, displaying or spreading it in the net. In regard to a development project, the Economic right is crucial. This means that a person who has produced a training material, on the basis of copyright, prevents its distribution. Slide 5 in a development project If the development project uses existing material, they have to find out who the owner of the copyright is, and make settlements as to what rights should be transferred to the project. An agreement should be made with the project participants to transfer sufficient copyrights to the project organization. If the project uses subcontractors it should be agreed in connection with the subcontract agreement that all the rights are transferred to the partner who has made the subcontract agreement, or to the project leader. Slide 6 The partner organizations should agree on the copyrights between themselves. They could, for example, agree that all the rights are transferred to the leader organization. This kind of arrangement is rarely satisfactory. The normal practice is that each participant organization retains the rights for the sector of work they have done, but everyone is allowed to disseminate the entire product and to produce new copies. These rights can be limited geographically, for example, an organization is granted the exclusive right to disseminate a product in a certain country. Similar agreements can be made on the further development of the product. Slide 7 European ommission The European Commission also has its own expectations concerning the copyrights. The general principle has been that the Commission renounces all their rights on the condition that the partner organizations come to an agreement which supports an extensive dissemination of the product. The Commission requires a few copies of the training product and the right to present it in fairs, for example. These conditions are defined in greater detail in the respective project contracts. Slide 8 thank you