We are sometimes asked by authors about how they should protect their Intellectual Property when they create a case on OLab. For this, we strongly encourage the use of Creative Commons licensing for this purpose.
Creative Commons was first launched by Lawrence Lessig back in 1996. It is a nice simple way of placing protections onto your materials, which is both flexible and enforceable. There are various levels and options, which are all quite well explained on their web site:
Rather than repeat their excellent advice, we will summarize as follows.
BY — this simply means attibution, that when others use your work they should give you due credit.
NC — this prevents somebody from selling your materials.
SA — share-alike which means that if somebody alters your work, the same licensing still applies
These are the three parts that we recommend for our authors. Almost all our case materials on our servers are licensed under Creative Commons, BY-NC-SA.
There are other options but these are better explained by the CC web site. Simply pick the options that you want. There is no need to get legal affirmation, notarization etc.
You can still still place your materials in the Public Domain (CC0) but this then relinquishes all your IP rights.
This is a much more flexible system than simple copyright — it has been referred to as copyleft (although that is not quite the same).