Copyright

Copyright is a constitutionally protected right under Chapter 2 of the Swedish Instrument of Government (Regeringsformen) and is governed by the Copyright Act (SFS 1960:729) on Literary and Artistic Works (link to the Swedish legislation), commonly referred to as the Copyright Act (upphovsrättslagen). Copyright means that the person who creates a work holds the rights to that work. These rights grant the creator certain exclusive privileges, while also placing obligations on users. The law governs when and how a copyrighted work may be used, and the basic principle is that the user must obtain permission from the rights holder before using the work.

The rights holder must always be a natural person. Copyright is granted automatically, without the need for registration, as soon as a qualifying work is created. The law protects literary and artistic expression – that is, the creative form – not the underlying themes, facts, or ideas.

The work must be original and not copied from an existing work.
The work must not be overly simplistic.
The work must meet the threshold of originality (verkshöjd).

Verkshöjd refers to the level of originality required for a work to be protected by copyright. It means that the work must have such a distinctive character that it is unlikely two people could independently create the same result.

In some cases, if these three criteria are met, research data may be covered by copyright. However, since research data rarely reach the required level of originality, database protection (katalogskyddet, also called sui generis protection) is more commonly applicable.

Database protection

Database protection safeguards collections of information and is a legal right closely related to copyright. It primarily applies to databases that do not meet the criteria for copyright protection. A database may be protected if it contains a substantial amount of data that has been compiled, and/or if its creation required a substantial investment (see the relevant comments in the Copyright Act). This protection may therefore apply to research data that have been collected and organized in such a way that they meet these criteria.

Database protection grants the creator of a database similar rights to the economic rights associated with full copyright. It applies to the structure and compilation of the data (i.e., the database itself), not to the individual works or materials it contains.

Researchers may also use copyrighted materials in their work – for example, data consisting of images, texts, or videos protected by copyright. Such material may not be freely distributed without the rights holder’s consent. However, this material may still qualify as an official document (allmän handling) and could be disclosed upon request in accordance with Sweden’s principle of public access to official documents (offentlighetsprincipen). Copyright does not override this principle.

Moral and economic rights

Once copyright has arisen, it is divided into moral rights and economic rights.

The moral rights give the creator the right to be credited by name in connection with the work. The work may not be altered or used in a way that is offensive to the author. Moral rights are personal and cannot be transferred.

Economic rights, by contrast, give the creator control over how the work is used commercially. These include the right to make copies of the work and to make the work available to the public, for example through public display, performance, or publication. Unlike moral rights, economic rights can be transferred to another natural or legal person.

Economic rights may be governed by agreements, meaning that the right to use a work can be granted or restricted by contract. However, certain legal frameworks that apply to public authorities – such as the Swedish Administrative Procedure Act (förvaltningslagen) and the Freedom of the Press Act (tryckfrihetsförordningen) – cannot be waived by contractual agreement.

Open licences

Open licences aim to facilitate Open Access publishing, which is a requirement for all research funded by the Swedish Research Council.

Although this currently does not apply to research data, it is increasingly common to publish data under a licence that specifies how the data may be reused and how they should be cited. However, in order for research data to be licensed in the first place, they must fall under copyright or be protected by database rights.

Read more about licences at Researchdata.se.