IP

White Paper Discussion to go here.

OWEA Members Involved in this Focus Area

• Doug Schepers (lead)
• Lars Gunther
• Mark DuBois
• Aaron Gustafson
• Aarron Walter
• add your name here

Session outcomes

Discussion Notes from 7 August 2008 in Chattanooga, TN

Intellectual Property and Licensing Policy

W3C has a Royalty-Free license for all patents that pertain to the implementation of essential features of a technology. However, this does not necessarily apply to materials for a curriculum, which would seem to fall under copyright; there is a policy in place regarding email archiving and distribution for people posting to those lists.

As part of the investigation into IP policy, we need to seek advice from stakeholders and contributors, including Peachpit and Yahoo. Considering that some of the primary deliverables and goals of OWEA revolve around this issue, it may be appropriate to retain on staff a US IP lawyer with publishing experience.

Sources (input, contributions)

• all contributions to the Curriculum assign rights of use and copyright to W3C/OWEA
  • may need explicit policy about commercial-use joint control
• supplementary materials may have different licensing terms
  • value-add for books
  • slide decks
  • code / software
  • other materials
• policy for linking to external resources?

Distribution Channels (output)

• different licenses for different resources?
  • commercial use
    • limited-use license for commercial publication
    • be explicit regarding degree to which content must or may be modified to be used commercially
    • need policy about use of OWEA name (see certification and branding)
    • potential revenue for W3C/OWEA
  • non-profit use

Publisher Licensing

(One of the more likely publishers is Peachpit Press, who publish textbooks.)

The W3C has touched on joint publishing rights for W3C and the author for an SVG book.

• provides funding
• exposure
• distribution channels
  • publishers may guard/defend school districts
• any curriculum material in books must be licensed by W3C/OWEA
  • additional material by other authors?
  • different grants for different countries
• distribution of payments among contributors?
  • multiple vs. single author
  • co-licensing: 50% each to OWEA and author?
• for charity and earmarked profit portions, publisher should make a proportional contribution to that of the authors