Need more help? This guide provides an overview of copyright, and librarians are available to discuss your particular situation.
Copyright is a set of rights given to a copyright owner or holder (an author, an artist, a filmmaker, a musician, a publisher, etc.) for an original and creative work fixed in a tangible medium of expression, which can take a physical or digital form.
Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (Title 17, U.S. Code). Copyright law seeks to balance the interests of the public and authors, who are rewarded by the law with protections to encourage them to create works for the public to use.
“An original and creative work fixed in a tangible medium of expression”–in other words, things like articles, artwork, books, movies, recordings, pictures, website text and images, designs, and more.
According to the U.S. Copyright Office’s publication, Copyright Basics (Circular 1), these are some of the types of works that can be protected under U.S. Copyright Law:
It is important to note that a copyright notice is not required in order for a work to be protected by copyright law. Your work is automatically copyrighted as soon as it is "fixed in any tangible medium of expression." When you register your copyright, it becomes part of the public record, as evidenced by a certificate, and it allows you to pursue legal action if someone infringes on your copyright.
Generally as the creator of your work, you own the copyright. However, there are notable exceptions to the creator automatically being the copyright owner. For example, an employer may be considered the copyright holder. The University of California has policies that define the copyright ownership status of works produced within the university. As an employer, the University retains the copyright of "works made for hire" by employees for certain types of works. One exception is that UC academic authors traditionally own copyright to the scholarly works that they produce, and the 2021 UC Policy on Copyright Ownership contains more details along with the policy FAQ. Collaborative creation falls under the rules for joint authorship and collective works.
According to the Copyright Alliance and the Digital Media Law Project:
There are also items that don’t receive copyright, but they do fall under other parts of intellectual property law, including trademarks and patents:
The US Patent and Trademark Office provides more information to help distinguish which intellectual property law applies to particular works or discoveries.
More information about copyright considerations is provided on the University Library’s Electronic Theses and Dissertations page.
Using a copyrighted work means that you need to determine its copyright status, your rights, and any permissions granted, whether openly or by your request. One of your rights is Fair Use. Many uses of images, quotations, and other materials in scholarly writing may be fair use, but an academic purpose does not automatically guarantee fair use. The key questions include: How are you using it? and Are you using an appropriate amount? Evaluating whether your use of a work is fair will help you determine whether you can use it.
Unfortunately you cannot assume that just because a use is for an educational purpose, it is automatically a fair use. It is necessary to consider not only the purpose of your use but also the creator's original purpose for the work and their primary market.
For example, scanning your course's textbook and adding it to Canvas to save your students some money would not be fair use, because you are not using the material in a different way or for a different purpose, and you are using so much of it. On the other hand, imagine a scenario where you're scanning sections of an old history textbook to demonstrate the racial or gender bias it exhibits, rather than for your students to learn history the way the book presents it. That would be a much different way than the book was originally written to be used, and a strong case for fair use.
If you don't want to worry about whether your use is a fair one, and the work you want to use is included in a library subscription or database, you can always provide your students with a link rather than a PDF. A stable link is provided in every UC Library Search entry.
Sometimes this is a fair use question, but often it is a question of whether the figure is even copyrightable in the first place.
Facts are not copyrightable. If particular facts can only be expressed in one way, or if they've been expressed in a very obvious and standard way that is not creative, then that expression of facts is not copyrightable. If the figure you want to use is a fairly standard graph that looks like it was made in Excel, that's probably not copyrightable and therefore permission is not required. The more creativity and design used in displaying the data, the more likely it is that a figure is copyrightable.
If you're not sure if a figure is copyrightable, or you believe that it is, you still may consider fair use as a possible option. If you are including the figure to critique it or provide your own commentary (therefore using it for a different purpose than the original creator), and using an appropriate amount, then you have a strong argument in support of fair use and still do not need permission.
According to the UC Copyright FAQ, “it is generally permissible to reproduce or distribute copies of certain copyrighted works, such as instructional materials, if such copies are reproduced or distributed in specialized formats for use by individuals with disabilities. Examples include providing a digital or Braille copy of a textual work to enable use by students with print disabilities, or providing a captioned version of a video when such version is not commercially available so that the video may be used by a deaf or hard–of-hearing student.”
The UCSC University Library is committed to supporting our users with disabilities and has a central webpage with relevant resources and services.
Western conceptions of copyright do not align with Indigenous practices related to creation or intellectual property. In Pulling Together, a book focused on the Indigenization of post-secondary institutions, Dianne Biin, Deborah Canada, John Chenowet, and Lou-ann Neel note the following: “Within many Indigenous knowledge systems, oral permission is required before accessing cultural materials or practices such as legends, stories, songs, designs, crests, photographs, audiovisual materials, and dances. These practices and materials are owned and transferred by specific individuals, families, or groups within their respective Nations. Permission to use them is contextual to the researcher’s relationship with the owners, the intent of the research, and how the practices or materials will be shared… Learning about these protocols from the community you are working with will contribute to the content and context of the research partnership agreement. Researchers need to build connections with Indigenous communities and knowledge keepers to seek oral permission.”
One noteworthy project is Traditional Knowledge (TK) Labels, which function similarly to Creative Commons licenses. Developed through sustained partnership and testing within Indigenous communities across multiple countries, the Labels allow communities to express local and specific conditions for sharing and engaging in future research and relationships in ways that are consistent with already existing community rules, governance and protocols for using, sharing and circulating knowledge and data. TK Labels promote new standards of respect by embedding Indigenous rules and protocols within digital systems.
The Copyright Claims Board (CCB) is for small claims about copyright infringement and serves as an alternative to judicial proceedings about copyright. Read more about what to do if you receive a CCB notice on the UC Copyright website.
This FAQ includes content adapted from the University of Pittsburgh Copyright FAQ and Indiana University Copyright Guide.
The land on which we gather is the unceded territory of the Awaswas-speaking Uypi Tribe. The Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, comprised of the descendants of indigenous people taken to missions Santa Cruz and San Juan Bautista during Spanish colonization of the Central Coast, is today working hard to restore traditional stewardship practices on these lands and heal from historical trauma.
The land acknowledgement used at UC Santa Cruz was developed in partnership with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band Chairman and the Amah Mutsun Relearning Program at the UCSC Arboretum.
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