Ownership of research results

"Intellectual ownership" has had a strong position through the years. A closely related train of thought can be seen in Article 27.2 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, according to which "Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author". At the same time, EU research has the stated strategic goal that the European Union is to be the most competitive knowledge-based community by 2010, which means that investment in research and technical development as well as stimulation of innovation, knowledge transfer and increased private investment in research and innovation are seen as essential in increasing European competitiveness.

The basic principles might very well clash; on the one hand we find the principle that a creator of a work owns the result of his or her research. On the other, there is the principle that an employer has the right to an employee's inventions. How to solve this tension and how to create a balance between these interests might differ between various countries. Only Italia and Sweden have in Europe traditionally employed a notion of a teacher's exemption (full right to inventions and copyright).When collaborating with for example american scholars, one should note that they have no exemptions in place for the employee's right, and that patents there belong to the universities.

The importance of publications

Normally, results of scientific work are published in monographs or articles, which constitute a fundamental part of scientific work. Through publication, results can be distributed to the rest of the scientific community and to society at large. Thereby, others with knowledge in the field have the opportunity to confirm the result or point out possible mistakes or errors, as well as build upon what the researcher has already done. Furthermore, such openness fosters valuable discussion regarding science's methods and consequences. The CUDOS norms have often served as a foundation for this reasoning, maintaining that there can be no exclusive rights to knowledge. This should not be interpreted as a denial of the fact that copyrights are applicable in scientific publication, they are. Copyright protects the manifest form that the creator has given his or her ideas, but not the ideas themselves. The CUDOS norms stresses that knowledge should be available to everyone. Ethical questions arise concerning publication of results as well as who owns these results. For questions about publication, click here.

Copyright

In short, copyright laws asserts that the person who has created a literary work has a copyright on it. This involves an exclusive sole right to access to the work as concerns copying the work or making it available for the public. Protection exists automatically when a copyrightable work (a literary or artistic product, in a wide sense) is created. A literary work can be, for example, all types of descriptive work including computer programs, databases, technical drawings and maps. The law also contains special protection for catalogues and similar products that represent the compilation of a large amount of information or a compilation that has required substantial investments.

Possession of a copyright means that others must have the author's permission for all uses save those concerning the occasional copy of limited parts of a work for private use. A basic condition for such private copying is that the work has been made public with the creator's approval. Computer programs in machine-readable format are never allowed to be copied, not even within the private sector. This also apply to private copying of digital collections in digital format. It is allowed, however, to quote works by others as long as the citation be made according to good practice and insofar the extent of the citation is in accordance with the purpose of quoting - as long as the source is acknowledged. In the same way it is allowed to paraphrase works by others. The use of citations and references is often in the interest of the cited author.

European standards

Community Law comprises a number of directives that harmonize parts of European copyright. The free movement of knowledge and innovation is regarded by the Commission as the "fifth freedom" (green paper Copyright in the knowledge economy). A directive on copyright in the information society was adopted by the EU during 2001, concerning, among other things, databases and the length of time a copyright is protected, which is normally set at 70 years after the author's year of death, see Directive 2006/116/EC on the term of protection of copyright and certain related rights. There is also an edicio princeps on a 25-year protection for someone who publishes older, currently unknown work for which the copyright has expired.

In 2004 the Directive 2004/48/EC on the enforcement of intellectual property rights was adopted, concerning civil law sanctions. New adjustments has beeb made to WIPO's Copyright Treaty, which modernizes the fundamental international regulations concerning copyright and adapts the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works to the digital community.

Patents

The fundamental international regulation regarding questions on patents is to be found in the Paris Convention for the protection of industrial property. The European Patent Convention plays a decisive role in patenting in Europe; it makes possible a co-ordinated patenting procedure for 20 European countries at the European Patent Office in Munich. For more information on patents, click here.

TRIPs

In recent years on an international plane, the 'TRIPs Agreement' (the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, which came into force 1995) has appeared. The agreement stresses not only the importance of rules on exclusive rights, but also the need for such rules to be managed by the legal system ('enforcement') in a way that is satisfactory to the person possessing the right. The relation of TRIPs to public health is regulated by the Doha declaration.

For someone employed as a researcher by a multinational company, there is the OECD Declaration And Decisions On International Investment And Multinational Enterprises. According to OECD's rules, these companies shall "to the fullest extent practicable, adopt in the course of their business activities practices which permit the rapid diffusion of technologies with due regard to the protection of industrial and intellectual property rights", as well as "when granting licenses for the use of industrial property rights or when otherwise transferring technology, do so on reasonable terms and conditions".

Last updated: 2009-12-18