The repository shall have policies in place to address liability and challenges to ownership/rights.

This is necessary in order to minimize potential liability and challenges to the rights of the repository.

A definition of rights, licenses, and permissions to be obtained from producers and contributors of digital content; citations to relevant laws and regulations; policy on responding to challenges; documented track record for responding to challenges in ways that do not inhibit preservation; records of relevant legal advice sought and received.

The repository’s Preservation Policies and Preservation Implementation Plans and mechanisms should be vetted by appropriate institutional authorities and/or legal experts to ensure that responses to challenges adhere to relevant laws and requirements, and that the potential liability for the repository is minimized.

The Service Management Policy states the Depositors responsibilities as: 

• Ensuring that the data description provided with their Deposit(s) is consistent with the data stored in the APTrust. 
• Affirming that it has the right to place its Deposits in the APTrust preservation storage environment. 

The Preservation Policy “describes APTrust’s preservation components in our repository, which are available to all Academic Preservation Trust (APTrust) member organizations.”