According to Department of Defense Instruction (DoDI) 1322.26, Development, Management, and Delivery of Distributed Learning, Intellectual Property (IP) and government rights to software should be considered at the outset of any ADL related project. These requirements are described below in the context of the ADL Registry (ADL-R) and the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM).

Section 6.4 of DoDI 1322.26 states, "Intellectual property rights shall be described in the ADL-Registry. Contract documents for distributed learning content shall invoke DFARS Subpart 227.71 and 227.72 to obtain the rights needed for the Government to be able to secure the minimum necessary rights and/or product..."

Also, according to Enclosure 4 of DoDI 1322.26, "The contracting officer is encouraged to use the clause DFARS 252.227-7020 in contracts to deliver distributed learning products when it is necessary so that the service provider, as one of the contract deliverables, copyright the resulting work and/or products and assign the copyright in its entirety to the Government."

The ADL-Registry metadata requires a "yes" or "no" under the "Copyright and other restrictions" field. Refer to the ADL-Registry website Technical Reference for more information: http://adlregistry.adlnet.gov/about/developers.

SCORM recognizes that the IEEE Learning Object Metadata (LOM) is the de facto standard for metadata within the learning community and strongly recommends that LOM be used when describing SCORM Content Model Components. IEEE LOM has the following fields under the Rights category:

• "cost" and "copyright and other restrictions" that require a "yes" or "no"
• "description" of which the LMS or application that processes the content package needs to allow for at least 1000 characters

This description field allows for a description of the copyright or intellectual property rights that pertains to the content package. This element can be used to define the digital rights that the government has pertaining to the particular product, or a pointer to another place where this information is clarified. Refer to the SCORM 2004 3rd Edition Content Aggregation Model (CAM) for more information: http://www.adlnet.gov/scorm/.

More information on government copyright and intellectual property rights can be found at: http://www.cendi.gov/publications/04-8copyright.html.