Membership and Intellectual Property

Intersect is a not-for-profit, member organisation. It was created with the express intent of addressing shared needs among member organisations in the area of eResearch and digital technology, by pooling resources across the membership. This is particularly evident in the case of membership services, namely, services and support from the Services Team, facilitated through a specific member of that team placed on-site, and associated member training courses.

In order to facilitate this communal approach to development of eResearch capacity, the Members Charter clarifies that any Intellectual Property (IP) developed by Intersect employees is held by Intersect in trust for its member organisations (Clause 16). This allows all members to share in the benefits arising from work conducted by Intersect for one member.

The Charter also requires Intersect to undertake its best endeavours to maximise the financial return from IP (Clause 18). Thus, IP arising from work conducted by Intersect for one member will return benefits to all members in different ways, depending on the individual circumstances. This may include:

• Access to the IP through membership services;
• Ability to purchase fee-for-service products or services generated from the IP, typically at membership discounts;
• Re-investment into the membership of financial returns from the commercial sale of products or services generated from the IP to other parties.

Training Material Intellectual Property

New training courses typically arise from initial demand at one particular member organisation. In response to this demand, the Services Team develops a new course, typically with the specific individual placed at the member organisation with the initial demand taking the lead on course development. These courses are retained by Intersect, added to the Course Catalogue, and become available for all members.

In addition, they may be offered on a fee-for-service basis to members seeking additional training beyond their membership allocation, or to other organisations, with the resultant financial return being re-invested in the membership. For this reason, training materials are, at present, not “open” (i.e., available for non-members to access and use) nor “open to members” (i.e., available to members seeking to run additional courses beyond those included in their membership allocation).

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