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Managing Intellectual Property Rights in Cross-National e-Learning Collaborations 205 13 Managing Intellectual Property Rights in Cross-National e-Learning Collaborations Caroline Windrum Introduction Technology-enhanced learning — or e-learning — is considered to hold significant promise for educational transformation. Potential benefits are argued to include the provision of more stimulating educational environments for learners, combined with more efficient, effective and scalable models for conducting the ‘business’ of education. Educational designers are involved in the production of, or look for access to, what are considered good quality resources as part of the educational offering. This is particularly the case in networked education, where heavy demands are placed upon making available pedagogically rich resources. The growth of digital technologies has accelerated the ease, pace, scale and affordability by which works may be copied, transmitted, shared or disseminated. Equally, the various forms of new media are helping to achieve improved levels of quality or fidelity in the derivative text, audio- or visual-based materials (Stamatoudi and Torresmans 2000). The upshot of these developments is that the use of works is not so easily tracked, monitored or controlled by the owner as in the past. Herein lies the dilemma. The creation of innovative e-learning materials requires major upfront investment of time, effort and expertise. At each point of the educational design process, forms of intellectual property (IP) are created, disseminated and used. What claims may individuals involved in materials production make upon their works, how do they regard the outputs of their effort, and what are the implications for the subsequent management, maintenance and use of these materials? These issues are brought into even sharper relief in the context of cross-national e-learning materials development collaborations, where different legal IP frameworks, institutional and cultural practices are in operation. The eChina-UK e-Learning Programme brought together academic groups from different universities to work together in teams in order to create high-quality, innovative teaching and learning materials. In all cases, it was envisaged that the materials would 206 Caroline Windrum benefit from the collaborative design process and be used in subsequent educational programmes in the respective Chinese institutions. The programme comprised four distinct collaborations in the initial phase, each tasked with the design and development of educational materials in a particular area (see Table 1.1, p. 6). This chapter explores the topic of IP within the collaborative e-learning projects, based upon team member accounts of how they encountered and sought to resolve issues. First, it addresses how the interviewees perceived and accounted for IP issues. Second, it considers the forms of agreement that the teams reached regarding the ownership and use of IP. Third, it seeks to highlight the ways in which teams managed these agreements during the course of the programme. Finally, there is an opportunity to reflect upon what these insights might reveal about the processes of addressing IP in cross-national e-learning collaborations. The implications for future developments in this area are also speculated upon. (Further information on IP in the eChina-UK projects is available on the programme website: http://www.echinauk.org/.) Before turning to these issues, however, it may be helpful to sketch out what is meant by IP. What Is Intellectual Property? IP provides a legal definition to the outputs of human creativity, invention and innovation and conveys ownership to the individual who generated the creative work. There are various forms of IP; patents, copyright, trade marks and design rights are the main ones. Traditionally, the notion of IP Rights (IPR) is viewed as an attempt to strike a balance between two competing interests: private and public. It is argued that society (the users or consumers of IP) benefit by gaining access to new ideas and knowledge generated by individuals (the creators of IP). In turn, individual creators (or originators) need to receive some form of incentive to stimulate and encourage them to share their ideas and knowledge with others. Rewards can take various forms for the individual: personal recognition, financial return, or enhanced reputation (McSherry 2001). Copyright is the principal form of IP contained in educational materials. “Copyright protects the labour, skill and judgement that someone — author, artist or some other creator — expends in the creation of an original piece of work, whether it be a literary work, a piece of music, a multimedia programme, a Web page, a painting, a photograph, a TV programme, or whatever” (Oppenheim 2004: 1). It entails different categories of work, e.g. literary, dramatic...

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