Background
Most CLARIN projects will deal with (huge quantities of) text and text-tools (=software) that were originally written by one or more authors and is owned by these authors or by a legal entity that has bought the rights. In other words: there is always a legal owner of the text and the text cannot be used without solving these legal issues.
Now that a lot of text is found on the Internet, people often believe that any use of these texts is free just because it is on the Internet: that’s wrong! Without any official announcement of the owners of the content (text and tools), this content isn’t free of IPR.
Text and tools used in CLARIN projects will be made publically available on CLARIN servers and therefore all IPR-issues need to be solved before a CLARIN-project can be granted.
Ownership of original data and software remains with the original owners and the CLARIN-project leaders needs to negotiate with these content owners about the conditions under which the text and tools can be used and placed on CLARIN-servers.
To Do
If the owners of the original data and software are not identical to the project participants, an agreement must be in place between the owners of the original data/software and the project participants on the IPR of the adapted data/software before the submission date of a proposal. Otherwise ownership of the created adaptations and extensions will be with the owners.
The project participants have the obligation – and therefore must have the rights – to make the research data, the application, its core component(s), and any run-time auxiliary data or software available on a CLARIN server. This is a sine qua non. Any proposal not satisfying this requirement or being insufficiently clear about this matter will be considered to be formally noncompliant and will be rejected on these grounds.
The project proposal should describe all issues related to IPR and present a solution for them. The relations between the partners in a project must be agreed upon in a consortium agreement before the start of the project.
Support
We realise that it can be difficult and therefore time consuming to clear all the issues around the IPR; hence, when possible, CLARIN will offer help.