All the normal provisions of the Copyright Act which have been presented also in this guide are applied to research regardless of whether it comes to research materials or research results and publications. Further information may be found from this guide.

 

Basic principals are:

 

If you want to use materials which are protected by copyright you must ask permission from the right holder unless the exception provisions of the Copyright Act state otherwise. See further Exceptions.

 

Copyright belongs to those persons who have made the works unless it has been specifically agreed upon otherwise and rights have been assigned to someone else. See further Transfer of rights.

 

In research projects you should take into account that parties to the project make co-operation agreements in which rights to own and use research results and other materials are also agreed upon.  Party to the co-operation agreements is the university and in order to be able to accept the obligations in the agreement the university and the other parties to the agreement must first be assigned from the right holders such rights to copyright protected materials the co-operation agreement requires. See further How to acquire rights and co-operation projects.

 

In particular you should take into account that within university research, rights to computer programmes and databases usually belong to those researchers who have made them. See further Use of computer programmes, Use of databases and Copyright and employment.