The Professors privilege (Teachers exemption)

As an employee at Uppsala University, you are covered by the so-called professor’s privilege (also referred to as the teacher’s exemption). In short, this means that you own the results of your research.

The professor’s privilege is based on legislation and custom and has been further specified in university guidelines (Riktlinjer avseende intellektuella tillgångar skapade vid Uppsala universitet (UFV 2020/943)).

The fact that employees conducting research at the university own their own work results affects how the university enters into contracts. Externally funded research may, for example, be conditional on the funder or a collaborating partner taking over or obtaining the right to use research results. It is voluntary for an employee to participate in research projects with such conditions, but if the employee chooses to participate, it is important that he or she is informed of and accepts the funding conditions to the extent that they affect the employee's rights under the professor’s privilege.

An employee who accepts to participate in a research project informed of the funding conditions may be deemed to have accepted them. The employee however has the possibility to influence the conditions before the contract is concluded. Participating researchers are therefore encouraged to communicate their position to the Legal Affairs Division at an early stage of the negotiation with the funder for assistance in influencing the contract.

To avoid any ambiguity about what has been accepted by the employee, the Legal Affairs Division recommends that the principle investigator confirms the funding terms in writing. For this purpose, the template Conditions for participation in the following project at Uppsala University is available on the page General on agreements and templates. The principle investigator is then responsible for ensuring that no one participates in the project who has not informed themselves and accepted the conditions.

It should be noted that projects funded by the European Commission under the Horizon Europe programme have a far-reaching set of requirements regarding research results, which the Legal Affairs Division further describe on the page Horizon Europe and research results. For these projects, the Legal Affairs Division recommends that specific agreements are concluded with the researchers involved according to a template, which can be found on the page General on agreements and templates.

Sometimes it may be appropriate to use the university's holding company as the owner of research results. More information on the page Managing intellectual property with UU RIP AB.