Sometimes, it is not immediately clear who owns the copyright in academic research: the researcher who created the work or the university or research institution. To determine whether copyright has been transferred from the author to the institution, it is important to check the applicable legal and contractual framework. A transfer may be provided for in the university’s governing regulations, internal rules governing the relationship between employees (including researchers) and the institution, or specific policies on intellectual property management. In some cases, copyright may also be implicitly transferred if this can reasonably be inferred from the purpose of the employment relationship. However, to avoid uncertainty, it is preferable to establish any transfer of rights clearly and in writing.
In Switzerland, researchers at most Swiss universities retain copyright in the works they create, while other intellectual property rights (such as patents, trademarks, and designs) are transferred to the institution. This is the case where institutional regulations state, for example: “Except for copyright, the institution owns all intellectual property rights...”. Moreover, such university regulations usually grant the institution exclusive rights to use software developed by employees in the course of their employment.
By contrast, most Swiss universities of applied sciences own also the copyright in works created by their employees in the course of their employment for the institution (incl. research data and research results).