Comments on: The Intellectual Vampires of Academe

By: niti bhan

niti bhan — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 03:44:36 +0000

I must agree with you then. One hates credit to be ’stolen’ and I think anyone with half a brain who churns out original thinking has faced this issue at one point or another.

I won’t say a word to your second comment

By: niblettes

niblettes — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 03:22:00 +0000

I’m trying to remember if I ever saw an IP policy when I was in school… no matter, I never had an ideas worth stealing back then anyway.

By: niblettes

niblettes — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 03:19:57 +0000

This was a case where a professor took a design project a former student had done in another design class, and a year after that student had graduated copied it almost exaclty with no credit or recognition for the original work–work that professor had nothing to do with. And the school apparently said this was all okay.

I guess this would be like if you were working toward an MFA, and a professor copied one of the your class sketches and passed it off of his own.

I wonder if the scrutiny over patents and potential patents means schools are more diligent about giving credit where it is due, whereas regular work (which in the case of design usually means creating new stuff) doesn’t get the same consideration.

Regardless, I don’t think that’s the way to treat people. So students (espcially design students) really need to pay attention to thier school’s IP policy and read the fine print *before* they start submitting really interesting ideas–cause its too late to do it after.

By: niti bhan

niti bhan — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 01:27:28 +0000

I also read through the post you reference and would like to add that *at* least when/where I’ve been in charge of admissions, a copy of the IP policy went out with the accepted packet with your letter. I can’t speak for other schools.

By: niti bhan

niti bhan — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 01:21:49 +0000

As someone who had a year’s fellowship (from Pittsburgh’s Heinz Foundation) to train in the area of technology transfer and licensing at the Office of Technology Management at U of Pitt I’d like to add my few rupees worth of information.

Research universities usually make available the information you are mentioning on their TT sites, for eg. http://tech-link.tt.pitt.edu/inventors.html including the IP policy.

Student researchers in a graduate program’s research lab, headed by a professor, under whose grant or funding they are being paid for, often do get named in the “inventor” part of the patent application. The “assignee” of the patent can be either the University investing in the time consuming and costly patent application process OR the corporate sponsor, if there was one.

However, in the majority of the cases, the inventor is the team that came up with the novel idea and they benefit from many commercialization of the invention in the future in a distribution system also given very clearly in the U’s tt office site. Why? because universities WANT to encourage invention submissions for evaluation for commercial potential. It is good for them.

Students *can and do* benefit from this, and I fear that your rant, while heartfelt, may imply that is not the case. However, there are rules that apply for this process.

Here is a relevant note from pitts’ FAQ for example,

Can my collaborator be a co-inventor for patent purposes?

More than one inventor may be named on a patent. An inventor, for patent purposes, is one who has made a significant intellectual contribution to the development of the claimed invention. The status of inventor is determined by patent counsel. The standards for co-inventorship of a patent are more stringent than for authorship on a paper. **A person who follows your instructions in working on an experiment is probably not a co-inventor.**

In many cases, a student working under the professor’s guidance may not qualify as per the patent counsel’s rules as a co-inventor.