Intellectual Property: Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights

Often instructors in higher education supplement their course textbooks with readings from journals and other books. For Georgia Southern University faculty needing to place materials on traditional reserve at the University Libraries, please see our Practices and Terms of Use guide.

For posting electronic reserves on Folio online content management system, one should conduct a Fair Use analysis to determine whether or not permission is required to legally share selected supplement chapters or articles with your students. Please contact Intellectual Property Librarian John Schlipp to apply the Fair Use doctrine of the US Copyright Law to each instructional scenario.

Besides Fair Use, the Technology, Education, and Copyright Harmonization (TEACH) Act expands existing face-to-face teaching exemptions of the US Copyright Law, allowing instructors at accredited, non-profit educational institutions to use copyright-protected resources in distance learning (face-to-face equivalence), including websites and other digital delivery methods, without obtaining permission from the copyright holder in specific instances. Please note that the TEACH Act does not apply to online electronic reserves. Contact Intellectual Property Librarian John Schlipp for details.