Intellectual Property Policy for UK Charities Explained | LegalDocuments.co.uk

What this document is

An intellectual property policy is an internal governance document that sets out how your charity identifies, owns, protects and exploits its intangible assets. It covers four main families of rights: trademarks (your name, logo and brand identifiers), copyright (written, visual, audio and software works), patents (inventions, though rare for most charities), and design rights or confidential know-how.

The policy records who owns what, what staff and volunteers can and cannot do with charity IP, how third-party rights are respected, and how the charity handles licensing, merchandise and partnership arrangements. For registered charities, it also ties into trustee duties under the Charities Act 2011, trustees are required to protect and apply the charity's assets for its purposes, and intangible assets fall squarely within that obligation.

A good policy is short enough that staff will actually read it, specific enough that legal questions have clear answers, and flexible enough to cover situations the drafters haven't thought of yet. It should sit alongside your employment contracts, volunteer agreements and supplier terms rather than duplicating them.

How to use this document

1. Map what you already own. Before you can write a policy, you need to know what you're protecting. Walk through your charity's outputs, publications, training programmes, databases, websites, logos, photography libraries, research, software, and list the ones with genuine value or reputational weight. Note who created each item and in what capacity.
2. Define the scope and ownership rules clearly. Set out which categories of IP the policy covers and the default ownership position. For employees, works created in the course of employment generally belong to the charity under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, but you should still state this plainly. Address volunteer contributions, contractor work and collaborative projects separately, because the default rules differ.
3. Set out permitted uses and restrictions. Explain what staff and volunteers can do with charity IP in their work, what requires sign-off, and what is prohibited, for example, using the charity logo on personal projects, reusing charity training materials for outside paid work, or publishing research without editorial approval. Be concrete so the rules are usable without legal interpretation.
4. Build in a licensing and commercialisation framework. Decide how the charity will handle requests from third parties to use its IP, whether any revenue-generating licensing activity needs to sit in a trading subsidiary for tax reasons, and who has authority to sign licence agreements. Trustees should retain oversight of anything material, with day-to-day decisions delegated to named officers.
5. Plan for enforcement, review and training. Assign responsibility for monitoring misuse, registering trademarks where appropriate through the Intellectual Property Office, and keeping records of assignments and licences. Commit to reviewing the policy every two to three years, and make sure new starters and volunteers are briefed on it during induction rather than being expected to find it on the intranet.