Legal Examination of the Ownership of Academic Works

Academic works are considered as a critical source for the technology development of countries. In this article, the intellectual property rights of academic works at universities were, first, defined. In the next stage we examined the essential elements which are needed to create these works including; the creator, a special legal-person on behalf of university, existence of employment contract, and the created work. Also about the ownership of the intellectual property that is created in university, three criteria including work for salary, substantial use of university resources and transfer of ownership contract that are used in famous universities in western countries were introduced. We compared these criteria with what is used in some of Iranian universities along with intellectual property law of Iran and examined legal status of ownership for these works in three positions above.