Copyright Considerations for Staff in Relation to Research
Commercial use in the print environment
At the end of October 2003 certain sections of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 were amended to form the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 in order to comply with a new European Union directive. This now means that any requests, via interlibrary loan, for copies of material in support of research for a commercial purpose, or in support of private study which is directly or indirectly for a commercial purpose, have to be supplied through a copyright fee paid service.
A joint note from the British Library and the CLA (PDF) provides further detail on what might constitute commercial use.
Commercial use under the CLA licence
New provisions under the CLA Photocopying and Scanning licence do permit photocopies and digitised copies to be prepared for the purpose of an HEI’s commercially funded research, e.g. a contract or collaborative research project or consultancy. Costs for such use are now covered in the licence subscription.
Commercial use in the electronic environment
Many of the electronic resources available to staff and students at the University are subject to compliance with licence Terms and Conditions, even those that appear freely available. However, the services to which the library subscribes are normally competitively priced for use in education, in comparison with the external market price, because they are used for study and research purposes only, i.e. not for commercial gain. If required for commercial use, it is prudent to make contact with the service provider and to negotiate a special agreement for a period of time. A limited number of e-resource providers permit the use of their resources in the course of research funded by a commercial organisation.
