Subject to contrary agreement, copyright in a work made by an employee in the course of his employment belongs to the employer.

While not directly relevant to employment law, users of this program may be interested to look at EC Directive 2001/29 "on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society", 22nd May 2001. Implementation date was meant to be 22nd December 2002 (art 13) but the related UK regulations, the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003, SI 2003/2498 did not come into until on 31st October 2003. Also EC Directive 2004/48 (as corrected) "on the enforcement of intellectual property rights", 29th April 2004, implemented in the UK with effect from 29th April 2006 by the Intellectual Property (Enforcement, etc.) Regulations 2006, SI 2006/1028.

The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 makes no specific provision for databases. This is corrected by Copyright and Rights in Databases Regulations 1997, SI 1997/3032, effective from 1st January 1998, implementing as a "database right" the requirements of Directive on the legal protection of databases 96/9/EC of 11th March 1996. "Database right" applies without prejudice to any copyright(s) existing in the contents of the database. It gives the maker of a database the right to prevent extraction and/or re-utilisation of the whole or a substantial part of its contents if obtaining, verification or presentation of the contents has involved a substantial investment in the .

See also notes on Data protection and/or on Patents .