The official language of the FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland is German. This translation is provided for information purposes only and has no legal force.
The Federal Act on Copyright and Related Rights (Copyright Act; CopA SR 231.1) regulates the protection of authors of literary and artistic works. The Copyright Act also regulates the protective rights of performing artists, producers of audio and audiovisual recordings and broadcasting organizations.
Protected by copyright are literary, scientific and other linguistic works; works of music and other acoustic works; works of fine art, in particular painting, sculpture and graphics; works with scientific or technical content such as drawings, plans, maps, sculptural representations; works of architecture and applied arts; photographic, cinematographic and other visual and audiovisual works; choreographic works, pantomime, and others.
Copyright gives the author the right to be named as the author and the exclusive right to determine whether, when and how the work is used for the first time. The author also has the right to determine whether his or her work may be modified.
The rights of use or exploitation can be assigned by the author, for example to a publisher. Rights of use or exploitation grant the owner the right to use, reproduce, edit, distribute, perform, broadcast and commercially exploit the work. The author decides whether the right of use is free of charge or subject to a fee, limited or unlimited in time, and whether it may only be used by an authorized person or whether several persons are entitled to use it.
The commercial use of a work from the IRF platform is generally excluded. Commercial use is permitted if it is explicitly permitted by the Creative Commons license specified by the author.
If works are published in the IRF without specifying a Creative Commons license, commercial use is only possible with the consent of the author. Exempt from this are works whose copyright protection has expired according to copyright law.
Authors (creators, researchers) must also respect copyright when publishing their works. If they create entries in the IRF (publication, presentation, etc.) that contain images or photographs from third parties, for example, they are obliged to obtain the author's consent for this.