This article examines copyright issues related to research data underlying scientific journal articles. The analysis is made on a background of the opening and sharing of research data, an operation that also includes collaborative practices at the international level. Such practices can run into different types of legal protection, of different national laws, of different cultures and interpretations, which end up generating areas of difference that can inhibit the reuse of underlying data. In this way, we carry out a study of copyright as a possible protection of research data, from the perspective of scientific communication. For this purpose, bibliographical and documentary research were carried out. The bibliography in the PubMed Central repository, of the National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health of the United States, in articles from biomedical and biological sciences journals, and in other bibliographic databases that house scientific journals in these areas, such as the Capes Journal Portal, Springer Link, among others. The documentary research consisted of consultations on European Union copyright, sui generis rights on databases and protection of personal data laws; United States copyright law; Brazilian laws that regulate copyright and the protection of personal data; and the Brazilian Constitution. It is concluded that the copyright, naturalized and, at the same time, little researched as a forming element of the scientific area, probably proves to be inadequate to regulate legal relations in the scientific universe whose raw material is the production of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]