Stockholm, 4 October 2010

The Swedish government has announced it released a report "Kartläggning av exklusiva rätter" (Mapping exclusive contracts), concerning the existence of exclusive contracts around PSI re-use.

In June of this year the Swedish act on the re-use of PSI came into effect. The Swedish Agency for Public Management then was assigned to survey the extent to which Swedish public sector bodies have granted exclusive rights. It now has reported on the exclusive rights granted that it identified, and also mentions factors that affect the implementation of the PSI Directive in Sweden.

The survey shows that five central public sector bodies (the Swedish Accounting Standards Board, the Swedish mapping, cadastral and land registration authority, the Swedish National Heritage Board, the Swedish Maritime Administration and the Swedish Tax Agency) state that they have granted exclusive rights for one or more companies to re-use the respective bodies’ documents. Dalarna County Council states that it too has granted an exclusive right.

The survey was send to public service bodies that all fall under the re-use law. However the survey showed that the public sector bodies themselves have a different picture of the applicability of the re-use law to themselves. Thirty-nine per cent of the municipalities assert that they do not regard themselves as covered by the legislation. The same applies to 14 % of the county councils and 10% of the central government agencies.

The Agency’s survey also shows that knowledge of the PSI Directive and the Act on the re-use of public administration documents is, in several respects, limited. Moreover, there are unclear points regarding how the notion of ‘exclusive rights’ (or ‘arrangements’) should be defined. Based on the responses to the Agency’s questionnaire survey, wide-ranging perceptions of differences between licensing agreements, on the one hand, and exclusive rights on the other were found.

Therefore the agency concludes:

• It is imperative to define the terms ‘licensing agreement’ and ‘exclusive right’, and also to assist both central and local public sector bodies in their work of developing non-discriminatory licensing agreements. It seems advisable to link this work to the Swedish eGovernment Delegation’s assignment to assess in which areas, and for which types of document, standard licences may be necessary and which issues they should regulate.
• The eGovernment Delegation should therefore be responsible for the task of clarifying the term ‘exclusive right’ and describing how it relates to other forms of document re-use and should cooperate with the Swedish Competition Authority in this work. The eGovernment Delegation should have a coordinating role in the task of directing further information campaigns concerning the new Act on the re-use of public administration documents.

The report has an English summary attached and can be downloaded in PDF.