10 Staff Rule 120 provides that all rights, including title, copyright and patent rights, in any work or invention produced or developed by a staff member as part of his official duties shall be vested in the Organization. The Organization's policy on copyright applies to all products by WHO. It is intended to help make WHO's information more accessible, by ensuring that access to WHO's work does not become restricted only to those who have a subscription to a particular journal, or who are prepared to purchase a particular book. It enables WHO to make its material available as and when it wishes (such as on WHO web sites), and to adapt it for other purposes (such as in a workshop document), while giving journal or book publishers the rights they need to distribute the material through their respective channels.
20 As stated in Information Note 13/2007, all printed, electronic and audiovisual materials issued by WHO should bear a copyright notice, including the standard copyright line - © World Health Organization (year).
30 WHO copyright should, as a matter of principle, remain with WHO and should not be assigned to an outside institution. While WHO may decide to allow external institutions to reproduce or publish its information materials (under the terms of a standard contractual agreement), copyright should not be assigned.
40 Where material is prepared jointly by an external body at its own expense and WHO, joint copyright of the material as a whole may be agreed upon only when the technical contribution of the partner agency has matched that of WHO and when the partner agency's marketing and dissemination activities will complement and coordinate with those of WHO. Other factors that should be taken into consideration are:
- the extent of technical input from the partner;
- the nature of the partner (WHO should not hold joint copyright with a commercial entity);
- the partner's ability to market and disseminate the material; and
- the need for clear prior agreement on how copyright should be administered.
50 When WHO permits external institutions to translate WHO materials, WHO should ensure that the translation partner grants to WHO a broad set of rights to use the translation for WHO purposes, including the right to make the translation available on WHO web sites, to include it in a compilation of translations and to make copies for use in training. Insisting that copyright in such translations should belong to WHO would be an option, but this may not be advisable in the case of translations into non-official languages.
60 WHO staff members who prepare, in the course of their work, materials for publication by external publishers should not assign copyright in those materials to the publisher. For instance, a WHO staff member who is an author (main or secondary) of an article submitted for publication in a journal should use the attached licence, which permits the publisher to publish the article and to sublicense its reproduction to online database services, but which retains copyright for WHO. The licence may be adapted for the external publication of book chapters. (A separate agreement is used when WHO licenses a complete book manuscript for external publication.)
70 The Organization's information should not be distributed through entities with a commercial interest in the content for the promotion of any commercial products or services.
80 The actions of staff members with respect to other aspects of copyright and related matters should be guided by the provisions of the WHO Manual Part VIII Section 6.
