Recently, I faced a new academic phenomenon that a high level researcher informed me about. I am writing a potential reasoning of the phenomenon:
From a legal point of view, PhD is similar to a transaction in which a PhD student produces an innovative content for the University and, in return, the University will give the student a PhD degree. Thus, it may be concluded that whatever the student produces in these years in direction of his thesis is for University. Moreover, one of the important aspects of a successful research is the potential growth that a research can have (future work). A part of the future work is written inside the thesis; however, many times this part is not such detailed.
Now, suppose that a supervisor wants to take advantage of the future potency of work of the PhD student for the future PhD students of the same University (assuming that the University has the intellectual property of whatever he has produced in direction of his thesis). In this regard, the supervisor may decide to ask him provide a detailed future work list with explanations as a private/inter-lab document so that the next students follow this direction. Is this request legal (based on the Swedish regulations) from a supervisor to his student?