Who Owns the Copyright in My Works?
According to HKU's Intellectual Property Rights Policy:
| Scholarly Work Created by Staff | Student Thesis | |
|---|---|---|
| Copyright Ownership | The University generally owns the copyright in works you create. However, it usually does not claim ownership.
You may assign copyright to a publisher for publication, but it is recommended to retain your copyrights by using an Author Addendum. You are also encouraged to publish your work as open access. |
You retain the copyright in your written thesis. |
| Deposition Requirement | You should deposit the final accepted manuscript to the University's institutional repository, the HKU Scholars Hub. | RPg theses will be made open access in the HKU Scholars Hub under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. See Theses@HKU for details. |
| License Granted to the University | You grant the University a royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive worldwide licence to use the work for non-commercial purposes. | |
| Exception | If your work uses substantial University resources, the University will retain ownership, unless there is a written agreement stating otherwise. | |
Seeking Permission from a Copyright Owner
When publishing a book, journal, or similar output, your publisher will likely require you to clear copyright for all third-party content included in your work. This includes significant textual quotations, photographs, drawings, images, illustrations, diagrams, musical scores, and so on.
You may include reasonable amounts of text quotations without seeking permission, provided they are properly cited, which is allowed under the fair dealing exemption. For other copyrighted materials (like images and figures) where the fair dealing exemption does not apply, you must obtain permission from the copyright holder, unless the material is published under a Creative Commons license that permits reuse, or the copyright has expired and the work is in the public domain.
Note that if you have assigned copyright to your publisher without retaining rights (e.g., via an author addendum), you may still need to seek permission from the publisher to reuse your own work.
Proposed Text and Data Mining Exception in Copyright Ordinance
Text and data mining (TDM) involves copying and normalising data. If your data source is protected by copyright, you generally need a licence from the copyright owner.
In 2024, the HKSAR Government held a public consultation on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence and decided to amend the Copyright Ordinance by introducing a TDM exception. This allows reasonable use of copyright works for TDM without requiring permission from copyright owners.
The exception will apply to both commercial and non-commercial uses, subject to these conditions:
1. Lawful access to the copyright works is required.
2. No infringing copies may be used.
3. Records of the source of copyright works must be kept and disclosed.
4. The exception does not apply if relevant licensing schemes exist.
5. Copyright owners may opt out of the exception.
For the latest updates, please visit the Intellectual Property Department’s website.