University Regulations

Ownership of Student-Created Intellectual Property

This policy is intended to cover the rights of current and former WLU students with respect to student-created intellectual property. The most likely intellectual property to be created are theses, dissertations, cognate essays, research papers, books, poems, plays, scripts, essays, articles, dictionaries, maps, lyrics, musical scores, sculptures, paintings, photographs, films, videotapes, computer software, databases, records, tapes, cassettes and inventions.

Ownership rests initially with the author of the work, unless an author has been employed to create a work, in which case the copyright rests with the employer. Students who submit work to the University which is eligible for copyright protection, and which is submitted as a requirement of an academic program, are entitled to sole copyright ownership. However, once a piece of work has been accepted for publication by a journal or a publisher, it is the publisher who owns the work, in the absence of an agreement to the contrary.

Before a work is submitted for publication, a student co-author has the right to review and approve the draft manuscript, including the order of authorship. For a work based primarily on the student's own dissertation/thesis/research paper/cognate essay/case/musical composition, the student has the right of first refusal of senior authorship.

A complete statement of this policy is available in the Graduate Studies Calendar.

University Regulations Academic Privileges and Responsibilities

Official electronic version updated on February 4, 2002