Intellectual property

The concept of intellectual property encompasses any creation of human intellect and is regulated by the Spanish law on intellectual property. Additionally, the Spanish law on intellectual property. Additionally, the Regulations on the intellectual and industrial property of R&I activities at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya set out how the law applies to university staff.

These are the rights held by anyone who creates a literary, artistic or scientific work. The rights holder can be the author of the work, or the person or organization to whom the author has transferred the rights.

These rights include:

According to the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office, industrial property protects all creations that are related to patents, utility models, industrial designs and trademarks or trade names.

Copyright, represented by the © symbol, grants the holder exclusive rights to reproduce, publish, sell or distribute the work. It is the term used in English-speaking countries to refer to authors' rights.

They are open dissemination licences, halfway between the "all rights reserved" concept of copyright and the "no rights reserved" of works in the public domain.

There are various types of Creative Commons licences for authors to choose from when they decide upon the conditions under which their work can be copied, reproduced and modified, and these can be combined as desired.

There are six possible combinations of Creative Commons licences:

Alongside the six Creative Commons licences, there's also CC0 1.0 for when the author waives all their rights to the work. If the work is already in the public domain, the public domain 1.0 mark is applied.

An author always has to sign a contract with the publisher when they publish an article in a journal. Publishers often demand exclusive rights to reproduction and distribution of the work.

Article 37 of the new Spanish law on science, technology and innovation states that public sector research staff must always deposit a copy of the final version of the article and the associated data in open-access institutional or thematic repositories on the date of publication.

Bearing this in mind, you need to be fully aware of the issues involved when you begin the publication process. That's why we strongly advise you read the section entitled Copyright and editorial policies, and send any questions you may have to ciencia_oberta@uoc.edu.

As the author of the doctoral thesis, you are the sole holder of the moral and economic rights to your work. However, you must authorize the university so that it can comply with the law and be able to publish the thesis.

It is a document signed by the doctoral student and the university, in which the doctoral student declares that they have been informed of the university's public communication of their thesis, and that they agree to this. The university publishes doctoral theses in its O2 repository and in the TDX repository, under a Creative Commons licence.

For more information about of where doctoral theses are published and why they have to be published in open-access format, take a look at the section about open knowledge at the UOC.

Yes. The results of technical research that involve a new invention and which have an industrial application can be protected as industrial property (utility model or patent).

That's not true. If the results of your research can be considered industrial property and you think it is appropriate to protect them with a patent in order to be able to transfer them to society, you should bear in mind that before they can be disclosed publicly (article, conference paper, poster or any other form of disclosure), their patentability must be studied and, where applicable, the relevant patent application registered. Otherwise, any disclosure would be considered a prior state of the art, which would mean the results could not be patented. The results can be publicly disclosed once the application has been submitted.

Filing a patent application is recognition of the inventors' creativity. A patent is also a tool for recovering the investment the university has made by commercializing the result (licences or assignments).

A patent is a strategic weapon which a company can use to enhance its position in the market, especially in innovative sectors. It can benefit from it by limiting its use by others, and it can defend itself against competition from similar inventions and against falsification. So, if the results are useful for a company, the fact that they can be patented will make them more appealing.

Another advantage that a patent brings is that it provides support for the creation of spin-off and tech-based companies.

Finally, apart from the importance of patents in terms of boosting the impact of research on society, there are also benefits for researchers: 50% of the profits arising from the licence or assignment of patents belong to the researchers. Likewise, they also contribute to enhancing their CV.

The Frequently asked questions about authorship commissions section has answers to queries related to the commissioning of a learning resource.

Before requesting the updating of a resource produced in-house, we recommend that you contact the subject librarian to confirm whether the update is feasible (e.g. check whether the rights to use the resource are still applicable). Once you have confirmation that the resource can be updated, you can request this via the Learning Resources Requests (PERA) tool. At the same time, you will have to contact the author or authors of the resource to ask for their permission to update it. The Library can send you an authorization form with the information you need.

No permission is required if the update is being carried out by the same person who produced the original resource.

The Library's website has an Image banksguide, which has resources with freely available images related to the different disciplines

Yes. In accordance with the Open Knowledge Action Plan, you are free to use the Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND licence. You can find out more about publishing a new learning resource under an open licence here.

If you choose an open licence, you must make this clear when answering the question Publishing a new learning resource under an open licence? in the Learning Resources Requests (PERA) tool.

To safely use resources that are owned by third parties (external resources) in your courses, you must enter requests for these resources in the Learning Resources Requests (PERA) tool.

If you would also like to see a series of guidelines on the resources that can be used, take a look at How can you avoid being refused permission to use an external resource?

You can use the Ouriginal tool, which is available in all Canvas classrooms, to confirm the originality of the work that students submit. This tool tells you the percentage of plagiarism detected, the matching sections and the source used for the information.

This video tells you how to set it up in your classroom.