Research Data

Data ownership is a complicated issue because it deals with legal rights and contractual agreements.

Elements to be considered:

1. Data that is factual has no copyright protection. Most research data is factual.
2. Copyright at the item level is limited to items that meet the threshold for copyright protection ^{(see question: What is copyright and what is protected? on the page General Information)}.
3. A database can be copyright protected, if such database, by reason of the selection or by arrangement of its contents, constitutes the author’s own, sufficiently original, intellectual creation ^{(see question: What can I do with my copyright on the page General Information)}.
4. Databases can also be protected by a sui generis database right, if substantial qualitative or quantitative investments have been made in obtaining, verifying or presenting the contents of the database concerned. A database right gives the database’s creator the right to prevent extraction and/or re-utilization of the whole or a substantial part of that database’s contents.
5. Copyright within a dataset involves elements, such as annotations, visualizations, and metadata that are part of a dataset and meet the threshold for copyright protection ^{(see question: What is copyright and what is protected? on the page General Information)}.
6. Even if a dataset is not protected by an intellectual property right, agreements can be made as to the use thereof, for instance, confidentiality. In contrast to the rights associated with intellectual property rights, such abovementioned agreements involve only the party with whom such an agreement was made.