Teachers increasingly rely on internet technology, including blogs, wikis, and myriad interactive software.  Unfortunately, teachers’ ignorance of intellectual property rights often extends to knowledge about their students' and their own property rights when creating on the web. Unless stated in the host’s policy, generally the site's creator maintains IP rights. Teacher/student contributors often retain no rights. Unfortunately, many teachers are not vigilant about perusing these often extensive policies. Unbeknownst to them, the hosts of these sites may well own the rights to any materials posted there by teachers and their students, including reflections, personal information and pictures.  Many sites designed specifically for educators to create blogging groups for their students (e.g. Class Blogmeister) retain IP rights to all posted material. The terms policy of the popular networking site Facebook claims that its users own their own content, yet Facebook maintains the right to use that material, even in the eventuality that the account is deleted.  Facebook states, “you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook."  Further, Facebook’s privacy policy states, “By using Facebook, you are consenting to have your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States." Obviously, if maintaining IP rights to your own creations is, or may become important to you, prudence dictates a careful reading of each internet host's policy, prior to agreeing to the terms.

Teachers are at risk of surrendering ownership rights to their work even if the internet isn't involved.  In many cases, when a teacher creates a literary work in the course of his or her employment, the employer owns the copyright; however, there are exceptions. According to attorneys at PIPERS Patent Attorneys, “there is a well-established exception to this general rule, namely that copyright in a lecture delivered by an employee who is employed to lecture lies with that employee. Thus, by extension, it would seem that copyright in teaching materials produced by a teacher is owned by that teacher. The employer could always seek to obtain copyright in any teaching materials by inserting a suitable term in the teacher’s contract of employment, but this does not appear to be a term of the National Collective Agreement.” 

Teachers often ask how they can protect their copyright.  PIPERS explains, “Copyright protection arises automatically without the need for any formal registration.  As, however, it may be necessary to prove both the authorship and date of creation, it is a good idea to mark copyright material with the words '© Author Name. Date. All Rights Reserved.'  If you believe that you may wish to enforce your copyright at some future date it is advisable to lodge a copy with a firm of patent attorneys who can attest to its receipt.”

The increase of technology access and online courses at the university level has heightened awareness of ownership issues there, too. University professors face particular challenges relative to intellectual property.  Professors often guest lecture, and online courses are prevalent in today’s educational field.  Instructors create slides, video lectures, and other information for online students.  Do they own the rights to these materials?  Traditionally, when research is conducted at the university, rights lie with the university. However, in the end, some would argue that the final judgment should consider both sides -- the university and the individual instructor.  In either case, universities must continuously update and revisit their IP policies.  According to Dr. Veronica Diaz, Learning Technologies Manager, and Adjunct Professor at University of Arizona, “It is critical in the rapidly evolving development of eLearning technology that institutions regularly revisit campus IP policies. A policy that is five to seven years old hardly addresses the issues found in today’s distributed learning products … institutions would be wise to reexamine and revise policies on a regular basis to keep pace with rapidly evolving technologies and practices."  The American Distance Education Consortium has posted various university IP policies for educators.