Confidentiality and protection of trade secrets in project and degree projects

Legal background

Mid Sweden University is a government agency and is subject to the principle of public access to public documents. The principle means that everyone has the right to access documents and information in documents that are received by or prepared at the authority. These documents become public and public. Material that a student submits for examination are examples of such documents that, when they are handed over to an employee at Mid Sweden University, become public documents.

Restrictions on the publicity of documents may only be made if it is necessary with regard to the interests expressly stated in the Freedom of the Press Act. In addition, the restriction must be supported by law, where it is then explicitly stated that information worthy of protection under certain conditions is covered by confidentiality and is thus not public.

The rule in Chapter 24. Section 5 of the Public Access to Information and Secrecy Act (SFS 2009:400) stipulates that confidentiality applies to universities and university colleges for information about an individual's business or operating conditions, inventions or research results that have been provided or come to light in connection with research that is conducted in collaboration with an individual by agreement, whether it must be assumed that the individual has participated in the collaboration, provided that the information is not disclosed. This rule protects trade secrets in students' work against disclosure, provided that the information has been provided or has come to light within the company's collaboration in a research project with Mid Sweden University.

If the information is not related to research collaboration, but only to collaboration between the company and a student during the education, for example through a degree project, this confidentiality rule does not apply.

In addition to Chapter 24. Section 5 of the Public Access to Information and Secrecy Act, there is no applicable secrecy rule to prevent the disclosure of trade secrets in documents submitted by the student to the University, in the event that someone requests access to them. This means that such information risks ending up in the hands of anyone who requests access to the information. Mid Sweden University cannot guarantee that the information will not be disseminated, as a refusal to disclose the information would constitute a violation of the principle of public access to official documents.

Mid Sweden University's recommendations

The student should not communicate trade secrets or other confidential information in writing with the supervisor, course coordinator, examiner or other employee at Mid Sweden University, during the course of the work.

If a company wants to omit certain types of information in the report, which may affect its quality, the student should ask the company to state what type of information it is. It is important that the company provides all types of confidential information that may not be included in the report. In dialogue with the responsible examiner, an estimate is then made of whether these tasks are ultimately of importance for the grade assessment or not. It is the examiner who decides whether the work can begin.

If the examiner assesses that there are tasks that can be expected to have a negative impact on the grade assessment, the company should be encouraged to mitigate or completely remove the proposed restrictions on what may be included in the report. The examiner should not allow the work to begin if the company's restrictions can be assumed to have a negative impact on the grading of the student.

When the student's degree project is submitted for examination, the completed report is archived in the database DiVA (Digital Scientific Archive) where research publications, student theses and statistics are stored. Please note that this does not apply to project work. The student has the opportunity to decide whether the report should be digitally available in the public interface and thus make his/her degree project visible and accessible to others. The student is normally recommended to make it available. However, in order to reduce the spread of the information, the client can agree with the student that the work should not be published in the public interface. However, the report will always be archived at the University and available upon request to access it as an official document.

Please note that metadata is always published regardless of whether the student chooses to publish their work in full text or not. This means that the title, author, any summary, supervisor, examiner and more are always published and searchable in DiVA.

Information sheet

This information sheet can be used in communication with companies:
Confidentiality and protection of trade secrets in project and degree projects