Sunday, May 29, 2016

Lesson Plans

This solution to this case seemed pretty simple to me. I looked at five different areas concerning the case study to base my decision off of. I looked at who owned the copyright, and if a copyright had to be registered to be owned. Since the teacher knew that she had created her lesson plans before the other person, she owns the copyright. Hobbs clearly states this in chapter 2, "A work is automatically copyrighted at the moment of creation, as long as it exists in a fixed, tangible form." From this I gathered that the teacher clearly owned the graphics. The fact that the new text was just published shows that the teacher had the graphics first.

If the teacher did get her graphics from that other person, she would still be able to use them because they were for lesson plans. The Fair Use Doctrine shows that copyrighted works can be used without permission for educational purposes. The teacher was making no profit off of another's work. Even though the work was used at conferences, they were still for educational purposes and teachers have the right to share lesson plans in ways to educate.

Because it is actually the book that is in violation of the copyright law, I would recommend that she continues to use her graphics, and could  potentially take legal action against the author for attempting to make a profit from her graphics.

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