Intellectual property is something that you have created. The UK IP office has an excellent guide here.

However, IP is not just for businesses and products, it also applies to anything you personally write or create, such as a photograph, a work of art, or research.

There are different but similar laws to protect company logos and taglines (trademarks) and inventions and innovations (patents). Here is a link explaining the difference (USA). For the UK, see the IP link above for more.

Copyright protects your work and stops others from using it without your permission. You automatically have a copyright on your work in the UK and the USA as soon as you create it. 

You don't have to do anything special to own the copyright to your work, but declaring your copyright with your name and the year shows your intent to retain ownership of your work and the permissions to use that work.

In the USA, you may also formally register your copyright with the government Copyright office, but this is not required to have the copyright to your work. You have this automatically upon creation of the work.

Plagiarism is using ideas or works from another source, presented as your own, without explicit and specific acknowledgement. Here is Newcastle University's page on plagiarism.

You usually have a choice of licensing your work or not, with many variations, and you usually declare this when you publish a work, in print or online. A license declares clearly if you are allowing others to reuse your work or not, and in what way. 

Licenses can vary from 'public domain' meaning no copyright restrictions (rare), to some permissions granted, to 'All Rights Reserved' which means you aren't granting anyone any permissions at all for reusing that work.

For an example of licensing in action, think of the Disney Co., which licenses images of Disney characters to be made into toys. Disney owns the copyright to a character, but chooses to license that character sometimes for the making of toys. This licensing practice shows Disney's intent to protect their copyright, and therefore any un-licensed use of the character is then easy to distinguish as a violation of their copyright. 

Licenses come in many forms, but Creative Commons is a licensing organisation that is often used for creative works. Creative Commons also provides an extensive FAQ on copyright, licenses and CC licenses here. 

Creative Commons issues six different license types and one public domain tool. Here are some of the components of CC licenses.

Attribution

This part of a license governs whether the original author must be credited. It is rare that attribution is not required.

Commercial use

Licenses can and often do restrict reuse of a work for commercial purposes. This is the main point of licenses, to prevent your work from being misused by others for profit.

Derivative works

It's important to understand that licenses and copyright apply to not just the works themselves (written, photographic, drawings, etc.) but also to any derivative works made from those works. For instance, you cannot freely use someone else's copyrighted photo to make a new artwork or a 3D model, as those are derivative works based on a work that is copyrighted — unless the license allows for it. Furthermore, if the license includes the "SA" suffix, it means that derivative works are allowed, but crucially, those derivative works must have the same license on them as the original copyrighted source work ("SA" stands for "Share Alike").

Example license

CC-BY-NC-SA

This license says that the license is issued by Creative Commons ("CC") + the author must be given attribution ("BY") + the work must not be used for commercial purposes ("NC") + any derivative works must apply the same license as the original work ("SA").

Who decides which license?

If it's your work, usually you can decide which license you want to apply to your work. If your work was supported by a government grant, you may be required to make your work 'Open Access' with a more permissive license — more on that in the next section. Sometimes, if you work with a publisher, the publisher might decide which license has to be applied, or give you a range of licenses to choose from.

What if there is no license mentioned?

Although some authors might choose a free, public domain, "CC zero" license intentionally, you cannot assume this is the case just because they didn't make a copyright statement or mention a license. You should still do your due diligence and ask yourself "Do I have copyright permission to use this?" If you can't answer that positively, you must try to contact the author and confirm it's okay to use/reuse their work. 

It's crucial to understand that just because you found a work on the internet, like writing, an image, or a PDF, that does not automatically make it "free" to use. 

Sometimes things are posted without the author's knowledge or permission, and sometimes an author's copyright statement gets intentionally removed by bad actors — or even the original author's name. Always assume the author will assert their copyright unless you have explicit evidence to the contrary.

But what about free speech?

Free speech laws in the UK and USA protect your right to not be persecuted by your government for expressing yourself, but that free speech is not without limitations. Violating the rights of others is not the same as exercising free speech. The courts in the UK and the USA have consistently upheld copyright laws that protect the rights of creators. Your copyright in other countries is protected by the Berne Convention of 1886. 

What is Open Access?

The goal of Open Access publishing is to enable free online access to research publications with minimal restrictions over reuse. Open Access benefits researchers, academia, and wider society with increased visibility, openness and transparency, and knowledge exchange by maximising the visibility and impact of research.

How does Open Access work with copyright?

Copyright and Open Access are compatible. Research work may be published as Open Access by the publisher or by the author with an author's copy of the final manuscript. The exact license terms may vary, and still need to be respected with regard to that work. 

The key concept to understand is that the work is still copyrighted and licensed, but the goal of Open Access is to encourage authors and publishers to apply the least restrictive license possible to the work.

For students and teachers, some exceptions are made in copyright law for the purposes of education - specifically teaching and learning. This exception is essentially the same in the USA ("fair use") and the UK ("fair dealing"). These exceptions apply to student writing papers and teachers assigning reading. The exception is that advance permission is not required, but attribution is still required.

Students learn at university level, if not sooner, how to reference properly and give attribution to the original author. You cannot just copy and paste from a copyrighted source unless you use quotation marks, or, alternatively, you may paraphrase in your own words, but you must also cite the original author(s), and this applies in both cases. This is called giving proper attribution. Proper attribution applies whether or not you are covered by the "fair use" exception. Proper attribution keeps you in compliance with the law and avoids plagiarism.

Consequences for improper lack of attribution, AKA plagiarism, escalate with the higher the level of education. This behaviour is also called academic misconduct. Academic professionals, researchers, and publishers are expected to adhere to the very highest ethical standards in their own work, never intentionally plagiarising or violating the copyrights of others.

Universities employ departments of Research Integrity specifically tasked with investigating unethical behaviour in their own ranks or violations by researchers at other institutions, or publishers, against that university's staff and students. Small inadvertent mistakes happen, but if outright IP theft/copyright infringement/plagiarism occurs, there can be serious legal consequences, as described below.

It is illegal to violate the copyright of someone else's work

Copyright law protects property rights for authors and creators, and copyright infringement is a crime. 

Even if no copyright is explicitly declared on someone else's work, you must respect their copyright and seek permission to use that work, before you re-use it, modify it, make a derivative work, etc.

(There are limited exceptions for educational and academic use, called 'fair use', explained above.)

Consequences of copyright violation

If you copy someone else's work without permission, or plagiarise it, you can be sued by that person for violating their rights. 

• The court can order you to stop your copyright infringement and penalize you for damages.

• If you violated someone's copyright for commercial profit, you can also be prosecuted criminally by the government.

• Violations of copyright in the UK can be reported here.

Consequences of plagiarism

• For academics and publishers, plagiarism (a form of copyright violation) also falls under ethical rules surrounding research integrity — regulations governing their institution and/or industry. Investigations can result in severe career consequences for the individual or organisation, in addition to possible damages for copyright violation and potential criminal prosecution.

For writing

When you quote or paraphrase a copyrighted work, you must cite the author(s) every single time. 

Proper attribution (also known as a citation, or a reference) can be done with a footnote or a citation "call out" in a sentence, followed by the full reference later in the document. The full reference should include the DOI, if there is one. 

There are many styles for formatting references; see your local university library for more help on referencing or visit Cite Them Right.

Citation example 1:

This is an example of a footnote style1 citation in a sentence. The full reference will be at the bottom of the page as shown below.

__________________________________________________________________________

1Hitchens, L. (2026) The Mysterious Roman Dodecahedron. Archaeological Data Service. http://doi.org/abcxyz123.

Citation example 2: 

This is an example of a "call out" style citation in a sentence (Hitchens 2026). The full reference will be in the References section at the end of the document as shown below.

References

Hitchens, L. (2026) The Mysterious Roman Dodecahedron. Archaeological Data Service. http://doi.org/abcxyz123.

For images

Before you reuse an image, check the copyright. If there is no license statement given with permissions, you must seek permission from the creator first! 

If the copyright does have a license statement on it, reuse the image only to the terms of the license. For instance, the license may prohibit commercial use or not allow derivative works. 

When you publish a work, the publisher may ask you to get explicit permission for all the images, even if clear license terms information is shown, because the consequences are so high for copyright infringement. Be sure, and ask the author for permission.

If the copyright statement says 'All rights reserved' that means you cannot reuse the image at all.

No matter what, even if the license says you can reuse the image, and even if you're a student covered by the Fair Use exception, you must still always give credit to the author and print their copyright statement next to the image. You must provide this text even if there is no other caption for the image. 

Photo credit example:

Figure 1. The mysterious Roman dodecahedron. Photo by L. Hitchens copyright 2026.

Save time with licensed content

You can help yourself avoid violating copyright by searching databases that are already generously licensed.  

However, you should still do your due diligence to confirm and be confident about license conditions on any work you want to reuse.

Pro tip: Google search has a feature to find content by license type, as shown below ⬇︎ as does Firefox.