In an academic setting the most relevant IP rights are copyrights and patents. Although there is the possibility that other rights have relevance in a given circumstance, this will be the exception, rather than the rule. Please note that the below text applies to the situation under Dutch law. Although it has relevance to other jurisdictions, especially in Europe, these rights are primarily national rights.

Copyrights protect human creations. Copyrights come into existence by the creation of a ‘fruit of creative labor’ which falls in the scope of the copyright act requirements. The most common types of creations for academia are publications, theses, presentations, posters, reports, software.

However, the scope of protection is limited to the elements of these creations which have an individual character. The individual character means that it is the result of the personal choice of the creator. Although it does not mean that the element needs to be new in an absolute sense (i.e. never done before) it does mean that it needs to be different from which is available. The test whether a creation has an individual character is fairly general. A creation which has a limited individual character has a limited scope of protection. The scope could be so limited that it only protects against identical copies. Or the individual character can be so strong that another creation uses some elements, infringes the copyright of the original creation.

There is no active aim on the part of the creator required to create such a protected creation under Dutch law. Any creation, as long as it has the required individual character, can be protected. The copyrights in such a creation come into existence the moment the creation is created. The creator is the owner, unless the creation is created as part of the creator’s job. In that event the employer is the owner. For academics it is generally accepted that the copyrights in scientific publications are held by the authors and not by the university.

So now you have a copyright, what does it do? Copyrights give the copyright holder the exclusive right to publish and/or copy the protected creation. This means that the copyright holder or anyone with permission from the copyright holder (a license) may publish or copy the work. Although the law makes exceptions to the exclusive rights for citing from protected works, for example for newspapers or education, these exceptions are always limited to short citations. Plagiarism is, apart from the ethical perspective, a copyright infringement by the plagiarist. Copyrights last for 70 years from the date it came into being if held by a legal entity and 70 years after the death op the copyright holder if it’s a natural person.

Because it is an exclusive right the copyright holder can charge for publishing or having published its creation. This does require that there is a market for the publication as the copyright itself does not generate income. The most common route is publication via a publisher. It is worthwhile to note that many publishing contracts require assignment of the copyrights to the publisher. This is common practices but not a necessity to publish the creation. It may be worthwhile to agree to a license, i.e. a right to use, for the publisher instead. This may allow the original copyright holder to find further ways to exploit and ensures maximum control over his/her/its creation.

After assignation or if the employer becomes copyright holder there are some rights which are always held by the original creator. He or she author will have the right to be mentioned and to resist to major alterations of its creation but these rights have very limited commercial value, also as they cannot be assigned. Some publishing contracts even require that the author waives the possibility to enforce these rights, leaving the author with no future rights or recourse.