Copyright and the allied health professional: rights and responsibilities

Throughout the varied roles allied health professionals undertake in the course of their careers, in increasingly different settings, they will be both users and producers of information. Copyright rules and regulations govern the use of information and are changing all the time so that written advice rapidly becomes outdated. This article aims to help allied health professionals to practise legally and ethically by providing a framework for thinking about copyright that is illustrated in the context of two familiar practice scenarios. Copyright management is complex and lack of awareness leads to risk of infringement.