Can I photocopy my excellent class notes and sell them to others?

Can I photocopy my excellent class notes and sell them to others?

Whether in colleges or schools of various levels, students who produce excellent class notes are often highly regarded during exam periods, as everyone rushes to borrow and photocopy notes to help ensure their own success. However, if students do not take notes themselves and instead resort to borrowing and photocopying at the last minute, it raises the concern of unfair advantage. Can they simply photocopy their own notes and sell them to those in need?

First, we need to determine who holds the copyright to class notes. If the notes belong to the student who created them, the student can freely photocopy and sell them to others. If they do not belong to the student, then permission from the copyright owner must be obtained to avoid infringing on reproduction and distribution rights. Since class notes relate to the content taught by the teacher, from the perspective of copyright law, the copyright for teaching activities performed by teachers in their duties falls under Article 11, which states that unless there is a special agreement between the teacher and the school, the rights belong to the school, while moral rights still belong to the teacher. Furthermore, whether class notes are considered verbatim transcriptions, creatively reorganized by the student, or simply records of class highlights can affect their copyright status under the law. Below are the possible attributes of class notes for readers' reference.

If student notes are verbatim copies based on class recordings, it is equivalent to reproducing the teacher's lecture content in written form. Thus, copyright should be handled according to the agreements regarding copyright ownership that arise from the teaching activities between the teacher and the school. The notes may belong to the teacher or the school, and if there is no agreement between the teacher and the school, then under Article 11, moral rights belong to the teacher while economic rights belong to the school.

If student notes are produced using the student's understanding of the teacher's lecture content to create organized notes, this may constitute a new derivative work (i.e., incorporating the teacher's content with the student's own creativity) or merely rephrasing the "ideas" described in Article 10-1 of the Copyright Law. Alternatively, the notes may simply consist of teacher lectures derived from textbooks and teaching manuals authored by others, in which case the teacher's content may lack "originality" and not be protected by copyright law, making the students' notes irrelevant to the teacher.

However, determining who owns the copyright to student class notes requires consideration of many factors and should be judged on a case-by-case basis. As for photocopying class notes, if students borrow and photocopy notes among themselves, this still falls within the scope of learning, aligning with the purpose of material production or teaching activities. According to Article 65(2) of the Copyright Law, this should still be considered within the reasonable use framework. If a student invests effort into creating class notes that qualify as derivative or original works, any borrowing or photocopying between classmates still requires obtaining the original author's consent. It is not acceptable for Student A to borrow notes from Student B to photocopy them, and then for Student C to request a copy from Student A, as C's photocopying would fall outside B's consent, potentially infringing on B's copyright. However, if Student B wants to photocopy many copies of their notes for sale, they must ensure their reproduction does not infringe on the teaching materials or the teacher's content, or else it would violate the "reproduction" and "distribution" rights protected by copyright law. This is something to be particularly mindful of.

• The content of the above article is sourced from The Intellectual Property Office Website
• Authors: Lai Wenzhi, Wang Wenjun