Copyright: Protecting & licensing your own work

As a University of Twente teacher or researcher:
Anything you create as part of your job belongs to your employer (According to Article 7 of the Dutch Copyright Act). This means that teaching materials and similar works you create as part of your UT role belong to the University of Twente. 

There is one important exception: According to UT policy, UT authors retain the copyright to their scientific manuscripts, even though Article 7 Auteurswet  would otherwise assign these rights to the university. 
The rules are clear for scientific publications but more complex for teaching materials, inventions and patents and software. In these cases, please contact the university’s legal advisors.

Moral rights (persoonlijkheidsrechten, Article 25 Auteurswet) always remain with the individual author, even when the economic copyright is held by the university. These include the right to be named as the author and the right to object to distortions of your work.  Moral rights cannot be transferred under Dutch law. 

As a University of Twente student:
Under the general rule of Article 1 Auteurswet, you hold the copyright to your own work, provided it is an expression of your own ideas, thoughts, or feelings, and has an original character bearing your personal stamp. This includes your bachelor’s or master’s thesis. 

If you created the work together with others, you are joint copyright holders.
If the work is primarily an expression of your teacher’s or a company’s ideas (and you executed it under their direction), the copyright may belong to them instead.
For more information about copyright for students, see the information literacy guide.

Copyright arises automatically when you create an original work.  You do not need to register it or attach a copyright symbol for legal protection to apply. 

However, adding a copyright statement is best practice. It makes ownership visible to readers and helps prevent confusion later.  If you upload material to Canvas without a clear indication of who the copyright owner is, the Copyright information Point (CIP) may contact you to clarify ownership. A simple copyright statement avoids this.

For UT educational materials (including slides, documentation, course manuals, and readers but not any research output), we recommend placing the following statement in the footer, or on the first two pages:

                                                    © [YEAR] University of Twente

The [YEAR] should be the first year of publication of your work. If you update some parts of your work, you can use a range e.g. “© 2024-2026 University of Twente” to indicate 2024 is when the work was first published and 2026 is when the latest updates occurred.

If you are using the University of Twente’s standard slide templates, the UT logo also sufficiently communicates the UT ownership and identity, and a separate copyright statement is not necessary.

Joint authorship
When a work is created by multiple authors without a hierarchy and their contributions cannot be separated (for example, a co-written article):

• The authors are joint copyright holders. 
• Reusing, reproducing, or distributing the whole work requires the consent of all co-authors. 
• One author cannot license the work alone; licensing decisions must be made collectively. 
• Enforcement actions against infringement also generally require joint action (Article 26 Auteurswet). 

If there is a written prior agreement allowing one author to manage rights on behalf of the others, that agreement applies. 

Collective works (Article 5 Auteurswet)
When a work includes separately identifiable contributions from several people, such as an edited volume, anthology, or journal issue, the author is considered to be: 

• the person who directed and supervised the creation of the complete work or,  
• if no such supervisor exists, the person who compiled the different parts. 

Each contributor still holds copyright on their own part if it is clearly identifiable as theirs. Using someone’s part from the complete work without permission violates both copyrights. 

Works made under direction (Article 6 Auteurswet)
When someone creates a work based on another person’s design and under their direction and supervision, the person who provided the design and supervision is considered the author. A common example is an architect whose design is executed by a draftsperson. The architect is the author of the resulting drawings. If you come across a comparable scenario at the UT, and have questions about where the copyright lies, contact: cip@utwente.nl.

For students:
The joint authorship rules also apply to group projects.  If you work on an assignment with fellow students, you all share authorship of the work you create.
If you create a work in collaboration with an external partner, read any copyright agreement carefully.  Copyright often ends up shared between you and the company, and you may not be able to publish the work without the company’s permission.
Note that under Dutch law, copyright does not transfer automatically to the commissioning party. Any transfer of copyright requires a signed written dead (defined as “akte” in Article 2 Auteurswet). 

For more information see the information literacy guide. 

In the Netherlands, Copyright is inherent. This means it is automatically protected against being used, reused, and distributed by others. It is however recommended that you place your name on it to show that you also own the copyright to it.  For advice on a copyright statement see the dropdown “Format of a copyright statement” below.

If you want others to use or share your work, you can choose from the 6 Creative Commons (CC) Licenses. After choosing a licence, place the CC licence clearly on the first page of the document. CC licenses are not an alternative to copyright, but rather an addition to it.  When you publish under a CC license, you retain copyright of your work but grant permission in advance for others to use your work. The license that you choose defines the specific conditions of reuse.  For more information on when you can apply a cc license, refer to the section: “Can I always choose an open licence?” below.