Data ownership

According to directive 4.5 of UNIL and in accordance with the Article 70 of the Law on the University of Lausanne (LUL), research data initially collected or created as part of research carried out by members of the teaching staff, collaborators who carry out their research activities at UNIL, including administrative and technical staff who participate in research and collaborators paid by external funds, are the property of UNIL. According to the Swiss Code of Obligations only, the economic rights of what has been created during the duty of an employee are transferred to the employer (based on art. 321b Swiss obligations act).

Cases that have been the subject of special agreements with external partners on intellectual property resulting from collaborative projects remain reserved.

UNIL has the patrimonial rights  to the data resulting from the research it owns and can lay down management rules. The notion of economic rights refers to art. 10 LDA . Data not belonging to UNIL may only be used according to the authorisations granted by their owner and for the purpose stated in the consent form. Personal data or data resulting from research on human beings may only be used in accordance with the consent given and the applicable legislation.

Moral rights  remain with the author of the research. The moral right protects the author in his or her personal relationship with the work and cannot be transferred. This means that the author of the research can assert the rights inherent in his or her personality that flow from it (right of disclosure, right to have his or her authorship recognized, right to the integrity of the work, right of reproduction, right of communication to the public, etc.). It should be noted that the author may, without transferring his moral right, which is non-transferable, waive most of the rights arising therefrom. However, the right of paternity remains systematically attached to the author.

As a reminder, any use of a protected work requires authorization from the author in the form of a license.

Intellectual property rights are not covered here and must be settled with the UNIL unit responsible for technology transfer, PACCT (Powering Academia-industry Collaborations and Technology Transfer).

The Centre of Competence for Digital Law (CCDigitallaw) offers support to Swiss Universities (students, academic and administrative staff), in order to deal with the legal risks that concern digitisation, new media, digital technologies.