Durand, Béatrice2023-03-012023-03-012023978288931517810.58863/20.500.12424/4273110http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12424/4273110When French academics take plagiarizing colleagues to Court, they often are disappointed by the reluctance of the judges to acknowledge the full dimension of the plunder. Often the judges refuse to qualify many of the alleged text passages as counterfeiting. Two main principles guide them: “Ideas are free” and can therefore not be protected as intellectual property; only “the form” (the wording) may be. Since scholarly work aims to produce intellectual contents – ideas –, its productions would be, as a matter of principle, excluded from legal protection. In addition, the first work must also be “original” in order to be protected. Scholarly work always includes a more or less important empirical part. Since primary sources are regarded as belonging to the public domain, empirical (data based) work cannot be protected. Based on a personal trial experience this paper explores the semantic misunderstanding (“ideas”) and the inappropriate conception of empirical data as “public”, which lead to legal decisions unfavorable to the protection of research work.engGlobethics PublicationsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/academic integrityresearch ethicscopyright lawintellectual propertylegal protectionacademic fraudsanctions (law)Legal interpretationCriminal law ethicsResearch ethicsCheating and plagiarismBook chapter