Creative Commons licenses

Authors: A.A.Fuente, Universidad de Oviedo, Spain; A.Texeira, L.Morgado, Universidade Aberta, Portugal.

The general goal of this training material is to help teachers create academic materials while complying with the Intellectual Property (IP) laws, with licenses as the main point of interest. The focus is on Creative Commons (CC) licenses, as this licenses are probably the licenses of choice in the academic field.

Unit 1 introduces the main concepts needed to understand IP, including licenses. In Unit 2 we will learn about CC licenses and how to use them.

Unit 3 introduces additional IP concepts, as differences between countries in IP laws reside in these areas and they must be taken into account by the author of academic materials. These regional particularities are treated in Unit 4.

Creators of materials can use resources from others. In Unit 5 we will learn about the different types of resources that can be used, and a specific process to assure compliance with IP law when using these resources by checking the licenses. Unit 6 shows how to search for these resources considering the resource license.

The last unit is devoted to registration, which is usually the last thing done regarding IP when developing academic materials