Side-line activities & Intellectual property

It is anything but unusual for our postdocs to have teaching assignments at other institutions or to collaborate on other research projects, or even have a business etc.

However, in order to avoid IP entanglements and also to acknowledge Austrian employment law, we ask our postdocs to report these side-line activities.

All side-line activities of scientists (postdocs/predoctoral visiting scientists/PhD students/scientific interns) at ISTA thus require prior written approval by the scientist´s supervisor and the President. The side-line activity will be approved, if both of the following conditions are met:


• A side-line activity must not exceed 20% (8 hours/week in case of full-time employement) of the scientist´s working time and should be carried out in his/her leisure time
• A side-line activity must comply with ISTA’s rules for Intellectual Property (see Rules for Employees) and Conflict of Interest.

Please contact pdo@ist.ac.at to report your side-line activity – we will send you the necessary template.