Copyright Information for Faculty

The use of copyright-protected works at Queen's University is informed by the Canadian Copyright Act, Canadian case law (decisions from Canadian courts), the Copyright Compliance and Administration Policy, including Appendix A: Fair Dealing Requirements for Educational Copying, and various license agreements that the university has entered into with copyright owners and representative organizations. If your use of a copyright-protected work is outside of the scope of an exception in the Copyright Act, the Fair Dealing Requirements, or an existing license agreement, that doesn't necessarily mean that you cannot use that copyright-protected work; it does mean that authorization or permission from the author or copyright owner will be required in order to use that copyright-protected work. If authorization or permission is granted by the author or copyright owner, the use of that copyright-protected work can proceed. If authorization or permission is denied by the author or copyright owner, the use of the copyright-protected work cannot proceed and an alternative work should be sought. 

The Copyright Advisory Office offers a Permissions & Licensing service for Queen's faculty whose course materials may be or are outside of the scope of an exception in the Copyright Act, the Fair Dealing Requirements, or an existing license agreement. The Copyright Advisory Office will contact authors and copyright owners to request authorization or permission, will be party to license agreements when authorization or permission is granted, and will pay for any permissions or licensing fees - please note that any permissions or licensing fees paid by the Copyright Advisory Office are not forwarded on to Queen's faculty or students for reimbursement. Should responses from authors or copyright owners not be received or should authorization or permission be denied by authors or copyright owners, the Copyright Advisory Office and Liaison Librarians can assist with the identification of possible alternative content or works. 

Please note that many publishers require up to 6 weeks to process permission requests and that this timeframe can be extended to 8-10 weeks when they see their volume of permission requests peak in advance of the fall and winter terms. As such, if you know that you will need authorization or permission from a copyright owner in an upcoming term, please contact the Copyright Advisory Office for assistance in advance of that upcoming term. The Copyright Advisory Office generally starts preparing for the Fall term in May, the Winter term in mid-October, and any Spring/Summer courses in mid-February. 

Queen's faculty are encouraged to make use of Queen's University Library's Course Reserves service so that course materials can be made available to students through their course sites. The Copyright Advisory Office assists with Course Reserves by conducting fair dealing assessments, ensuring that publicly accessible online content complies with section 30.04 of the Copyright Act, identifying library-licensed content and works and making persistent links available within course sites, sending authorization and permission requests to authors and copyright owners, and licensing the use of copyright-protected content and works. 

If you have any questions about the Permissions & Licensing or Course Reserves services, please contact the Copyright Advisory Office for assistance: qcopy@queensu.ca. 

For more information about the use of copyright-protected content and works and when authorization or permission from authors or copyright owners will be required, please see our Copyright in the Classroom, Copyright in Course Sites, Categories of Content, and Media Production pages.