Whose Property Is It?

There's a thought-provoking article in EdSurge this morning. Just who owns a teacher's intellectual property? My husband, a former software engineer for several large tech companies, always had to sign over his rights to any ideas that he created as part of the hiring process. But educators do no such thing - at least until now.Advancing technology is going to make this an essential question for every school district to grapple with. Our lesson plans, reviewed regularly, are shared electronically not only with administrators but with colleagues. Documents and resources geared toward teaching, in fact, the teaching guides themselves, are often created by groups of teachers. It may be just a matter of time before enterprising schools, looking for new sources of revenue, want to monetize lesson plans or other teaching ideas developed by teaching staff.An example of this is sharing classroom plans with Special Education inclusion partners who need to know what the classroom language and content goals are in order to make learning accessible to students on individual education plans. This past year, I've had my lesson plans copied into another teacher's plan book without permission or attribution. When asked to stop, the person did; however, she continued to copy my "I can" or language/content goals again without permission. Was this a violation of my intellectual property?In the age of Teachers-Pay-Teachers, intellectual property is about to become a huge factor. Pay attention.