User:Danfurth/The Swedish teacher exemption

The teacher exemption (Swe: "lärarundantaget") is a Swedish legal concept which states that faculty and staff at Swedish universities have the legal intellectual property right to the results and products of the research they carry out and the teaching material they produce. This stands in stark contrast to other legal systems where typically employers, such as universities or research institutions, are entitled to all intellectual property created at/for their business, unless there exists a contract stating otherwise.

In Sweden faculty and staff can apply for patents themselves and choose when and where their research results are to be reported. This is an exception to the Law (1939:345) which stipulates that if an employee invents something or produces something that satisfies a threshold of originality, the employer has the right to the invention or product the employee creates.

The teacher exemption applies to a teacher or researcher at a university, college (Swedish: högskola) or other institution that belongs to the education system and this is called the teacher exemption.