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Do universities have a claim on students' IP?

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zridling:
University of Missouri student came up with an idea in class one day that spawned an iPhone application that has had more than 250,000 downloads since its release in March 2009. The app created by Brown and three other undergraduates won them a trip to Apple headquarters along with job offers from Google and other technology companies. But the invention also raised a perplexing question when university lawyers abruptly demanded a 25 percent ownership stake and two-thirds of any profits. Who owns the patents and copyrights when a student creates something of value on campus, without a professor's help?



Not happy with overcharging you insane amounts of money, colleges and universities are racing to revamp their policies regarding student ownership of IP (intellectual property). If that's the case, then Page, Brin, Gates, Dell, Zuckerberg, et al. owe lots of money to their... schools?! Bull hockey!!

Eóin:
Yeah you have to be careful. Since they came up with the idea in class then I don't see it as much different to an employer having the right to patent inventions from their employees. Ideas are more regarded than the actual work it seems these days (patent madness?) so that the professor didn't help them develop the application seems of little consequence. Yes I know students pay the university, not like an employer pays their employees, but it'd still be hard to claim the idea didn't have any contributions from the professor/course work.

I've recently finished my thesis, one of the optional forms I could submit was a request to delay the publication of the universities library and digital copies by 18 months. The idea there being to give the researcher a chance to cash in on their discoveries.

My understanding is that (in Ireland), at postgraduate level, the university does not have any rights to your research, but if you are being funded (internally/externally) then the funding body could possibly contractually insist on rights. I'm pretty sure also that your supervisor, involved as they would be in your research, would have a right to the work. I imagine it'd be quite a legal challenge to dispute that.

40hz:
Yeah you have to be careful. Since they came up with the idea in class then I don't see it as much different to an employer having the right to patent inventions from their employees. Ideas are more regarded than the actual work it seems these days (patent madness?) so that the professor didn't help them develop the application seems of little consequence. Yes I know students pay the university, not like an employer pays their employees, but it'd still be hard to claim the idea didn't have any contributions from the professor/course work.
-Eóin (January 24, 2011, 03:14 PM)
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In the US this would require whole new laws. Educational institutions have an entirely different tax status than businesses. So you can't extrapolate commercial legal protections as automatically applying to schools. Universities have insisted they are different and have demanded privileged treatment for decades. I doubt any court is going  to allow them to be legally treated like an employer when it suits them, and not when it doesn't.

And the simple fact that students are more clients than employees (because they pay to be there) is a BIG difference that won't be ignored by the legislatures or the legal establishment.

And under current contract rules, the schools can't declare a contract claim exists on a student's IP without going thru the usual offer/tender/acceptance procedure that makes a contract valid. And to insist on it happening after the fact is a real stretch that I doubt would fly in any courtroom.

Eóin:
I do understand that, but I'm just musing on the possibility of the university saying it had an active part in developing the idea and so has a valid claim to it.

40hz:
Be interesting if they opened up that can of worms considering all the research, ideas, and designs professors have appropriated from their students over the years. When I was at college there were two management professors that were notorious for picking and profiting from their student's brains. I'm sure there are many more throughout the university system world-wide.

Sword cuts both ways.  :tellme:

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