In the absence of clear permission, mapping how intellectual property law does-and does not-apply to research data may be of use. Alternatively, the final section of this Perspective describes means by which repositories can make it easy for depositors to signal the scope of the permission they grant to downstream users. It can be avoided if the repository requires depositors to grant permission to downstream users or to give up any intellectual property rights they may have in the data. This kind of legal uncertainty interferes with the productive reuse of research data. The EBI’s terms also warn the user that some third parties may claim intellectual property or other legal rights on the original data, and it is up to the researcher not to infringe these rights. It leaves open a question about whether an employee acting on behalf of his or her employer (is s/he acting as “an individual”?) is equally granted this permission.
This would appear to give any individual academic researcher permission to copy and reuse the data at will. For example, if one seeks data from the European Bioinformatics Institute, one will find that the terms of use state that “he public databases of EMBL-EBI are freely available by any individual and for any purpose”. The good news is that if a source of data-the researcher or repository-gives permission to reuse the data and one’s intended use fits within the scope of the permission, one need not be overly concerned with the details of the discussion that follows because the permission provides the legal basis for data reuse. The European Molecular Biology Laboratory-The European Bioinformatics Institute GNU,įor the researcher seeking to use another’s data, this Perspective offers some good news and some not as good news. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are creditedįunding: The author received no specific funding for this work.Ĭompeting interests: I have read the journal's policy and have the following conflicts: I am on the Board of Directors of Creative Commons, I am the Public Lead of Creative Commons USA, and I am on the Board of Directors of the Public Library of Science.Ĭreative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-NC,Ĭreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial CC BY-ND,Ĭreative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs CRISPR/Cas9,Ĭlustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats/CRISPR associated protein 9 EMBL-EBI, PLoS Biol 13(8):Ĭopyright: © 2015 Michael W. Citation: Carroll MW (2015) Sharing Research Data and Intellectual Property Law: A Primer.
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