Ethics and IPR - Much Needed Legal Solutions for Tomorrow

Abstract

This article considers the protection of authorship in scientific papers. We analysed the role of authorship in the light ofthe current legal and ethical framework. We have discovered that standard rules of copyright law refer to the relationshipbetween the 'author' and the result of their creative activity. 'Authors' are not originators of a discovery, idea, procedure,theory, method or other immaterial contribution to research unless they have fixed the intellectual work in any tangiblemedium of expression. At times, it is challenging to identify scientific products, which are an essential contribution toresearch projects, which means that copyright law might not protect them. These two contexts, modern science andcopyright law, allow us to conclude that ethical codes for researchers properly define the right to be an author of a scientificpaper. The study aims to clarify that (1) international human rights guarantee the protection of the author's moral rights ofthe original contribution to the research project, (2) this obligation is not implemented correctly by national legislators, (3)national legislators' task is to create an adequate legal protection system for original contributions to research scienceaccording to the example of the solutions adopted by the German legislator.