My gut tells me that this is a two part question.

First, one has to understand what are required in order to get copyright.

Secondly, one would have to decide if patient data is somehow excluded from the traditional copyright rules.

I found some of my old notes from law classes at uni. This is part of the EU Copyright Directive (copied in 2012, but the main motives remain the same) says:

“ If authors or performers are to continue their creative and artistic work, they have to receive an appropriate reward for the use of their work, as must producers in order to be able to finance this work. The investment required to produce products such as phonograms, films or multimedia products, and services such as ‘on- demand’ services, is considerable. Adequate legal protec- tion of intellectual property rights is necessary in order to guarantee the availability of such a reward and provide the opportunity for satisfactory returns on this investment”.

I could probably copy the entire document here, but as i remember, and as others have pointed out, European law is focused on providing “protection” to those who put in an “effort” in creating something that can be considered “creative” or “artistic”.

This is interesting, because that essentially means that data can be created without being protected by law. I remember hearing examples of cases where photos weren’t protected simply because the photographer didnt “put a effort” into taking the picture (read: anyone with a smartphone is essentially a photographer).

My take on the original question about the medical images, is that the image itself, it not protected by copyright (but i am not a lawyer). I would pose that there isnt any creative or artistic process surrounding taking the picture.

The second part I wonder about is, who “owns” patient data. Living in norway, I havent been able to find any legal documentation stating who owns patient data (journal notes, medical pictures, etc). There are lots of privacy laws protecting the data, and there are laws defining who has the right to access the data. But nothing really states anything about owning the data.

I would argue that the doctor does not know the data he/she enters in a journal, since they are “only” writing down what the patient is saying, and documenting what treatment the doctor has given the patient. Measurement data, lab data etc, are all automatically created, and are tied to the patient, so i wonder if the patient “own” the data.

Having worked in health tech a while, Ive never found any legal that clearly states ownership.