Intellectual Property Rights in OER: Understanding Open Licensing

Every time you share a lesson plan online, upload a presentation to a repository, or adapt someone else’s teaching material, you’re entering the world of intellectual property rights (IPR). For educators working with Open Educational Resources (OER), understanding IPR isn’t optional – it’s essential. Without this knowledge, you risk either violating someone else’s rights or failing to protect your own work. This post breaks down what IPR means in the context of OER, how open licensing works, and what every educator should know about Creative Commons licenses, public domain, and attribution best practices.

What are intellectual property rights? 🔗

Intellectual property (IP) refers to creations of the mind – inventions, literary works, designs, symbols, names, and images used in commerce. Intellectual property rights (IPR) are the legal protections that give creators control over how their work is used. These rights ensure that creators can benefit financially and morally from what they produce, while also balancing public access to knowledge and innovation.

According to WIPO’s guide on copyright, IP is generally divided into two main branches: industrial property and copyright. Understanding the difference between these two is fundamental for anyone dealing with educational content.

Industrial property 🔗

Industrial property covers inventions protected by patents, trademarks that distinguish the goods or services of one business from another, industrial designs related to the appearance of products, geographical indications, and protection against unfair competition. The primary goal of industrial property law is to encourage innovation and ensure fair competition in the marketplace. Patents, for instance, give inventors exclusive rights to their inventions for a limited time (usually 20 years), in exchange for making the invention details publicly available.

Copyright 🔗

Copyright, on the other hand, deals with literary and artistic works – books, music, films, paintings, software, and databases. Unlike patents, copyright does not protect ideas themselves. It only protects the form of expression of those ideas. So if you write a textbook on photosynthesis, your specific text, diagrams, and explanations are protected, but the concept of photosynthesis itself is not. Copyright protection is automatic – it exists the moment a work is created and fixed in a tangible form. No registration is needed, though registration can offer additional legal advantages in some countries.

The key difference for educators: industrial property typically applies to commercial inventions and brand identities, while copyright directly governs the educational content you create or use – your lesson plans, videos, slides, assessments, and textbooks.

Why OER needs open licensing 🔗

Under default copyright law, all creative works are automatically protected with “all rights reserved” status. This means no one can copy, distribute, adapt, or share the work without explicit permission from the copyright holder. This is a significant barrier in education, where collaboration, sharing, and adaptation of materials are central to effective teaching.

This is exactly the problem that Open Educational Resources (OER) aim to solve. UNESCO defines OER as learning, teaching, and research materials in any format that either reside in the public domain or are released under an open license permitting no-cost access, reuse, adaptation, and redistribution.

But here’s the important point: simply putting educational material on the internet does not make it “open.” As CUNY Hunter College’s OER guide cautions, just because a resource appears online does not place it in the public domain. Without an open license explicitly attached to a work, standard copyright restrictions still apply.

Open licenses work within the copyright system, not outside it. The creator retains their copyright but voluntarily grants certain permissions to the public. This shifts the default from “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved,” which is what makes OER legally distinct from other freely available online content. The five key permissions that define truly “open” resources, often called the 5Rs (proposed by David Wiley), are: Retain (make and own copies), Reuse (use in various ways), Revise (adapt or modify), Remix (combine with other material), and Redistribute (share with others).

Overview of Creative Commons licenses 🔗

The most widely used open licensing framework for OER is Creative Commons (CC). Founded in 2001, Creative Commons provides a set of standardised, easy-to-understand licenses that allow creators to specify exactly how their work can be used – without needing a lawyer or individual negotiations.

The four license elements 🔗

Every CC license is built from a combination of four basic elements:

Attribution (BY) – Users must credit the original creator. This element is required in all six CC licenses.

ShareAlike (SA) – Any adaptations of the work must be shared under the same or a compatible license.

NonCommercial (NC) – The work may only be used for non-commercial purposes.

NoDerivatives (ND) – The work can be shared but must not be modified or adapted.

The six CC license types 🔗

These four elements combine to form six different licenses, arranged here from most to least permissive:

1. CC BY (Attribution) – The most open license. Others can distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the work for any purpose, including commercial, as long as they credit the creator. This license is recommended when maximum dissemination is the goal.

2. CC BY-SA (Attribution-ShareAlike) – Same freedoms as CC BY, but any adaptations must be released under the same or a compatible license. This is the license used by Wikipedia and is sometimes called a “copyleft” license.

3. CC BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial) – Others can remix, adapt, and build upon the work for non-commercial purposes only. They must credit the creator, but their derivative works don’t need to be licensed on the same terms.

4. CC BY-NC-SA (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike) – Similar to CC BY-NC, but derivatives must also carry the same license terms. Common in educational settings where creators want to prevent commercial exploitation while encouraging sharing.

5. CC BY-ND (Attribution-NoDerivatives) – Allows redistribution (including commercial), but the work must be shared unchanged and in its entirety with proper credit.

6. CC BY-NC-ND (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives) – The most restrictive CC license. Others can download and share the work only in its original form, only for non-commercial purposes, and only with attribution. Notably, some OER repositories do not consider works with ND licenses to be true OER, since the inability to revise and remix limits the 5Rs.

CC0: the public domain dedication 🔗

In addition to these six licenses, Creative Commons offers CC0 (CC Zero), a tool that allows creators to waive all copyright and place their work into the public domain worldwide. With CC0, there are no conditions at all – anyone can use the work for any purpose without attribution. This is different from a license; it’s a voluntary surrender of rights.

Public domain vs. all rights reserved 🔗

Understanding the spectrum between “no rights reserved” and “all rights reserved” is crucial for educators who both create and consume educational content.

What is the public domain? 🔗

The public domain consists of all creative works where no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. A work can enter the public domain in several ways: the copyright term has expired (for example, works published before 1929 in the United States are generally in the public domain), the creator has deliberately placed it there using a tool like CC0, or copyright law simply doesn’t cover it (such as works produced by US government employees in the course of their duties).

Public domain works can be used by anyone for any purpose – commercial or non-commercial, modified or unmodified – without permission or attribution. However, as the University of Hawai’i OER textbook points out, while individual public domain works belong to the public, curated collections of those works may still be protected by copyright.

All rights reserved 🔗

At the opposite end sits traditional copyright, or “all rights reserved.” Under this model, no one may copy, distribute, display, adapt, or build upon a work without the copyright holder’s explicit permission. This is the default status for any creative work the moment it’s produced. For educators, using all-rights-reserved material in the classroom may be possible under exceptions like fair use (in the US) or fair dealing (in other jurisdictions), but these exceptions are limited and fact-specific. They certainly don’t permit the kind of broad sharing and adaptation that OER requires.

Where open licenses fit 🔗

Open licenses, particularly CC licenses, sit in between these two extremes. They allow creators to move from “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved” – keeping copyright but granting specific permissions to the public. This is the legal mechanism that makes the OER movement possible. Without open licenses, sharing educational materials at scale would require individual permission requests for every use, which is simply unworkable.

Best practices for licensing your OER 🔗

If you’re creating or adapting educational materials and want them to function as OER, applying the right license and following proper attribution practices is critical. Here’s a practical guide.

Choose the right license for your goals 🔗

Before licensing, think about what you want to allow. Do you want maximum reach and reuse? Choose CC BY. Want to ensure derivative works remain open? Go with CC BY-SA. Concerned about commercial exploitation? Add the NC element. Keep in mind that more restrictive licenses reduce the “openness” of your work and may limit its adoption. The Creative Commons License Chooser tool walks you through a simple decision process to select the best fit.

Also remember: once a CC license is applied, it cannot be revoked. Anyone who has already received the work under that license can continue to rely on it.

Follow the TASL framework for attribution 🔗

When using or adapting CC-licensed material, proper attribution is both a legal requirement and a professional courtesy. The widely used TASL framework (developed by Lumen Learning and recommended in CUNY’s Pressbooks Guide) gives you a simple checklist:

T – Title: Include the title of the work (required for CC 3.0 and earlier; optional but recommended for 4.0).

A – Author: Name the creator. If they request credit to a different entity or pseudonym, follow their instructions.

S – Source: Link to the original work so others can find it.

L – License: State the specific CC license and link to the license deed.

If you’ve modified the original work, you must also note what changes you made. This ensures transparency and helps future users understand the lineage of the material.

Check license compatibility when remixing 🔗

Combining OER from different sources can get complicated if the materials carry different CC licenses. Not all CC licenses are compatible with each other. For instance, you cannot remix a CC BY-SA work with a CC BY-NC work, because the resulting work cannot simultaneously satisfy both the ShareAlike and NonCommercial conditions. Creative Commons provides a license compatibility chart to help you determine which combinations are legally possible.

Verify copyright before licensing 🔗

You can only apply a CC license to material you own the copyright to. If you created content as part of your employment, your institution may hold the copyright. Check your employment contract or institutional policy before licensing. Similarly, if your OER includes third-party content (images, charts, text excerpts), make sure those components are either openly licensed, in the public domain, or used under a valid exception like fair use.

Use proper attribution even for public domain works 🔗

While public domain and CC0 works don’t legally require attribution, it is considered best practice to provide attribution anyway. Citing the source, creator, and origin of the work demonstrates academic integrity and helps other educators trace and evaluate the resource.

Why this matters for educators 🔗

The intersection of intellectual property rights and open education isn’t just a legal technicality – it shapes how knowledge flows globally. When educators understand licensing, they can confidently share their work, adapt resources from colleagues across the world, and contribute to a growing commons of free educational material. The WTO’s overview of intellectual property emphasises that a well-functioning IP system should stimulate innovation and facilitate the transfer of knowledge – and that’s precisely what OER aims to achieve in education.

Getting licensing right also protects you. Using someone’s all-rights-reserved material without permission can lead to takedown requests or legal issues. On the flip side, not licensing your own work means others can’t legally build on it, limiting the impact of what you’ve created.

What do you think? As an educator, have you ever been unsure about whether you could legally reuse or adapt an online resource for your classroom? And if you’ve created your own teaching materials, have you considered which Creative Commons license would best reflect how you want others to use your work?

References

1. https://www.wipo.int/about-ip/en
2. https://www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/wipo_pub_909_2016.pdf
3. https://www.unesco.org/en/open-educational-resources
4. https://libguides.library.hunter.cuny.edu/oer/copyright-and-intellectual-property
5. https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/cclicenses/
6. https://certificates.creativecommons.org/cccertedu/chapter/3-3-license-types/
7. https://libguides.adams.edu/OER/licensing-and-attribution
8. https://manifold.open.umn.edu/read/oer-101-go-open-go-free-f641f7d0-f545-4290-ae32-bb34cfd724c8/section/1c83133c-d723-4483-8979-fbd66e2af717
9. https://pressbooks.cuny.edu/cunypressbooksguide/chapter/best-practices-for-attribution/
10. https://creativecommons.org/faq/
11. https://asccc-oeri.org/attributions-and-licensing/
12. https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/intel1_e.htm