My notes, my copyright! Or Not?

In a recent instance, a student of University of California was reported to student judicial affairs by the University for selling his notes to a website. This instantly generated a debate over whether the copyrights of notes taken by a student vested with the instructor or the student.

Image from here

The newly updated UC Berkeley policy restricts students from sharing notes. Essentially, they claim that notes taken by students are a derivation of lectures given by instructors and hence the limitations whereas, on the other hand, the other side debates that it may extend only to works that have not been synthesized by the student.

In response to the above argument, the University realised the importance of defining, ‘course notes’ in their policy/student code as otherwise, the copyright act, being a federal law would prevail over any state law/university policy/student code if the actual terms of the policy referring to ‘course notes’ is interpreted broadly rather than pointing out at the intent of the same in which case the notes taken by the student would solely be the copyright of the student and not the instructor.

The website, Notehall, has however now stopped accepting notes from students of CSU as well as UC in view of their stern policy regarding this matter.

It is interesting to note that, in view of the above incident, the scope of copyrights subsisted by ‘notes taken by students’ has been discussed at some level. Applying, basic principles of copyright, as long as the notes taken by the students do not amount to outright copying of lectures or notes provided by the instructors, the copyrights for the same would belong to the student including the right to sell it.

However, on the other hand, keeping in view the standards of these Universities, the culture to be promoted should not send the wrong message of ‘not sharing knowledge’ but should at the same time not violate copyrights belonging to the instructors. Probably, any case arising out of such incidents have to be analysed independently before marking the line between copyrights that would belong to students and those that belong to instructors.

Author: Shravan

See also Song from ‘Agneepath's 'Oh Saiyya’ in copyright tussle