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The study examines the legal rules under Swedish law concerning the transfer of ownership in intellectual property (IP) rights from an employee to an employer. The main focus is on an employer’s interest in an employee’s work product, which is protected by multiple IP rights, e.g. a computer program that may be protected by both copyright and patent, or a design by both copyright and special design law. This multiple protection can lead to collisions between the parties’ rights. Thus, the study investigates how employees’ and employers’ rights and obligations should be handled in such a situation. The question how these collisions should be handled can not be answered without taking into consideration an employer’s possibility to acquire an employee’s IP rights, and therefore the study investigates whether and how an employer has an interest in an employee’s IP rights. The perspective is both parties’, using a practical and economical approach.

Whilst traditionally in unregulated employment relationships, an employer is given a weak interest in an employee’s protected work product, an employer is given a strong interest in regulated relationships. However, in light of present developments towards a greater legal regulation of such transfers of rights, the principles developed for regulated relationships also seem appropriate for unregulated relationships.

When it comes to overlapping protection in works, collisions can be resolved in practice by either applying multiple legal rules/principles to a transfer situation, or by applying only one rule/principle. In view of the fact that the various IP rights are of equal rank, a reasonable starting point is to cumulatively apply multiple legal rules and principles. This alternative however may result in a situation where the IP rights in one work product are not united in one hand. In such a situation, it is important that an employer’s and an employee’s rights to one and the same product are handled in such a way that neither party is obstructed in their exploitation.