Ownership of Intellectual Property rights in surveys by the Macaulay Institute and related bodies: EIR release

Information requested

• “I would also like copies of documents relating to the ownership of IP rights in surveys by the Macaulay and related bodies – either regarding their creation or transfer to the Macaulay by surveyors.”

After contacting you to confirm our interpretation of your request, it was clarified that you are asking for the following information:

• “Documents that detail who owns the intellectual property rights to the data/datasets that are produced when surveys have been completed by Macaulay. For example, contracts transferring IP if work was carried out by contractors or documents confirming that surveys were carried out by Macaulay employees. I would also like similar documents regarding the Scottish Crop Research Institute.

• This covers documents relating to surveys completed by Macaulay Land Use Research Institute (MLURI) and Scottish Crop Research Institute (SCRI) before their merger in 2011 to create the James Hutton Institute.”

Response

As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exception at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exception is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

I have included copies of the information you have requested in the attached Annex B. 

On reviewing materials within scope of your request, an exception have been applied in line with the EIRs. The exceptions applied can be found in the attached Annex A.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

EIR 202400423104 - Information released Annex A

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1 page PDF

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58.3 kB

EIR 202400423104 - Information released Annex B

File type

PDF

File size

257.7 kB