User obligations

You may download, re-brand and distribute the form to your users in any way you choose.

All higher and further education institutions, research councils and other establishments that license software and online resources under negotiated Chest Agreements must use its best endeavours to ensure that their organisation and their users comply with the relevant licence terms and conditions.

The form, ‘User Acknowledgement of Third Party Rights’, sets out, as completely as possible, the obligations of users when they make use of licensed resources. This form was formerly known as the ‘Copyright Acknowledgement Form' and was also known as 'Code of Conduct Form'.

Institutions should ensure that the form, or one substantially the same, is accepted by all staff and students once only – this is sufficient to cover all subsequent use of all licensed products.

We understand that it can be difficult to get staff and students to physically sign a form, so in the new version we establish that the user’s obligations become binding as soon as a person uses licensed software or online resources regardless of whether or not the form has been signed. We’ve left the option open for an institution which wants to mandate that the form must be signed by all users.

You may download, re-brand and distribute the form to your users in any way you choose.