Know your rights
About Intellectual Property
Rights at the Universities
The Finnish Copyright Act is fairly old and in desperate need of renewing.
There are a lot of things that the Copyright Act is
unclear of or have no mention of. Some things have
been settled during time in legal praxis and may give
some answers that way. But there are a lot of questions
that are debatable, since the law does not give answers
to all questions. For example the Copyright Act
does not have any details about copyrights within an
employment relationship. The universities have used
some contracts regarding intellectual property rights,
which have usually been signed in the beginning of
each project the employee is working in.
However, some universities have also tried to get
employees to sign very exclusive contracts about the
IPR that simply are not reasonable for the employee. In
these contracts the employee is obliged to give away all
their rights to their work (for example materials, notes,
finished research text) without any compensation and
also to agree to very broad variety of terms that may
lead to unforeseen consequences for the researcher.
For example by giving away the right to freely alter
their texts in general or for example teaching materials,
the researcher/teacher has no way of knowing what
form the entity will eventually take or no way or ensuring
that they do not end up looking unprofessional
because a lot of different people have altered their
original work. Also by agreeing that the employer may
forward the rights to a third party and possibly gain financial
benefit from it, may not be in the best interest
of the employee. Giving away all rights may also hinder
the publication of some articles and is against the international
publication practice.
The employer may not alter the employment contract
during the contract one-sidedly. Therefore the
employer may not ask the employee to sign an IPR
contract during the employment relationship. If the
IPR contract is not reasonable, it may be considered invalid
or it may be mediated later. However, in the end,
the question of reasonability is a matter for the court to decide, should the employee plead that the
contract has unreasonable clauses. Taking
matters into court may lead to uncertain end
results, take time and be costly.
Therefore it is always best not to enter
contracts that may be considered unreasonable.
A lot of the teaching and researching
staff (up to 70%) is working under fixed-term
contracts. It may be very easy for the employer
to persuade the employee in need of a new employment
contract to sign an IPR contract, even though the
terms are nor favorable or reasonable for them. If the
employee is offered an IPR contract or any other contract
the employer demands they sign before or with
the employment contract and it seems the terms of the
contracts are not reasonable, it is wise to contract the
local shop steward or the trade union.
For more information, please visit http://www.finlex.fi/fi/laki/kaannokset/1961/en19610404.pdf
Text Mia Weckman
lawyer, the Finnish union of
university researchers and teachers
- Painetussa lehdessä sivu 40
|