Universities And Intellectual Property

Presuming no background knowledge of intellectual property, and ending with a call to action, The Branding of the American Mind explores applicable laws, legal regimes, and precedent in plain English, making the book appealing to anyone concerned for the future of higher education.

The vital role played by universities in producing creative and innovative products is becoming increasingly recognized both by policy makers and by the universities themselves. Universities are now looking to tighten up their policies on intellectual property so as to maximize revenue, for instance through spin-off companies; but this arguably restricts the free flow of knowledge and scientific progress. The authors look in detail at this highly topical subject, both from a policy and a practical legal point of view, drawing upon research covering universities in the UK, Australia, and the USA. The book begins with identifying what is protectable as university intellectual property and the principal features of the various intellectual property regimes that are relevant to these questions: subject matter, criteria for protection, ownership and entitlement, rights conferred and their duration. It then turns to the creators - the academics, students, visiting scholars, and outside collaborators who have an interest in the intellectual property - and the varied collaborative circumstances in which it is created. It evaluates differing intellectual property policies and methods of commercial exploitation and postulates certain guidelines and models that will be of assistance to universities in dealing with these issues. Readership: Intellectual Property lawyers, University officials, scientists, academics and reference libraries in the UK and worldwide1. Introduction 2. What is a University? 3. What is University Intellectual Property? 4. Identifying the Creators and the Circumstances of Creation 5. Allocating the Rights - The Legal Background 6. Policy Developments and Specific Challenges 7. How Universities Allocate IP Rights through Institutional Policies 8. Reporting, Rights Allocation, and Other Matters 9. Exploitation of Intellectual Property: Universities as Entrepreneurs 10. Future Directions: Ownership 11. Future Directions: Commercial Exploitation 12. Looking to the Future Appendix 1 Ownership and Exploitation of Intellectual Property in Universities: A National, Comparative, and Theoretical Study.

Explore the different forms that intellectual property (IP) has taken in higher education in recent years and how to navigate the changing landscape for faculty members and university administrators. Due to technological advancements and the rise of neo-liberal policies influenced by academic capitalism, faculty members are finding their rights being renegotiated, often without their input. Through patents, copyrights, distance education programs and MOOCS, universities and publishers are seeking to gain a competitive advantage in a market largely dominated by profit generation. All this is putting the university’s public mission in tension with increasingly profit-driven university management practices. This volume: Presents policy trends in university IP regulation over the past 40 years, Examines the utility of IP rights in higher education, Considers the implications of knowledge ownership in the academic profession. and Details the IP barriers that faculty encounter when attempting to share their work. This is the 177th volume of the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series New Directions for Higher Education. Addressed to presidents, vice presidents, deans, and other higher education decision makers on all kinds of campuses, it provides timely information and authoritative advice about major issues and administrative problems confronting every institution.

In 1988, a Roundtable committee, in conjunction with the Industrial Research Institute, developed a set of model agreements to streamline the negotiation process. The intent was that these models would decrease the time and effort needed to develop a research agreement, as well as provide a starting point for companies and universities new to negotiating agreements. In general, the models were well received by the academic and industrial communities. However, one concern, intellectual property rights, continues to pose significant hurdles to successful negotiation. Intellectual Property Rights in Industry-Sponsored University Research: Guide to Alternatives for Research Agreements identifies the contentious issues related to intellectual property rights and develops contract language that makes it easier to negotiate agreements for industry-sponsored university research. This report clarifies issues that cross institutional boundaries when university-industry research agreements are negotiated.

Thirty years ago federal policy underwent a major change through the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which fostered greater uniformity in the way research agencies treat inventions arising from the work they sponsor. Before the Act, if government agencies funded university research, the funding agency retained ownership of the knowledge and technologies that resulted. However, very little federally funded research was actually commercialized. As a result of the Act's passage, patenting and licensing activity from such research has accelerated. Although the system created by the Act has remained stable, it has generated debate about whether it might impede other forms of knowledge transfer. Concerns have also arisen that universities might prioritize commercialization at the expense of their traditional mission to pursue fundamental knowledge-for example, by steering research away from curiosity-driven topics toward applications that could yield financial returns. To address these concerns, the National Research Council convened a committee of experts from universities, industry, foundations, and similar organizations, as well as scholars of the subject, to review experience and evidence of the technology transfer system's effects and to recommend improvements. The present volume summarizes the committee's principal findings and recommendations.

This text reports and discusses the results of a three year long empirical, legal and philosophical investigation into the ownership and exploitation of intellectual property rights by universities in the UK, the USA and Australia. It reviews and compares the intellectual property regimes and academic traditions within which these universities operate, and evaluates the differing policy approaches which these institutions have adopted to the ownership and exploitation of intellectual property created under their auspices. It concludes with a consideration of desirable alternative approaches that might be adopted to these matters in the future.

Written by leading experts from across the world, this Handbook expertly places intellectual property issues in technology transfer into their historical and political context whilst also exploring and framing the development of these intersecting domains for innovative universities in the present and the future.

Who owns academic work? This question is provoking political and legal battles, fought on uncertain terrain, for ever-higher stakes. The posting of faculty lecture notes on commercial Web sites is being hotly debated in multiple forums, even as faculty and university administrators square off in a battle for professorial copyright. In courtrooms throughout the country, universities find themselves embroiled in intricate and expensive patent litigation. Meanwhile, junior researchers are appearing in those same courtrooms, using intellectual property rules to challenge traditional academic hierarchies. All but forgotten in these ownership disputes is a more fundamental question: should academic work be owned at all? Once characterized as a kind of gift, academic work--and academic freedom--are now being reframed as private intellectual property. Drawing on legal, historical, and qualitative research, Corynne McSherry explores the propertization of academic work and shows how that process is shaking the foundations of the university, the professoriate, and intellectual property law. The modern university's reason for being is inextricably tied to that of the intellectual property system. The rush of universities and scholars to defend their knowledge as property dangerously undercuts a working covenant that has sustained academic life--and intellectual property law--for a century and a half. As the value structure of the research university is replaced by the inequalities of the free market, academics risk losing a language for talking about knowledge as anything other than property. McSherry has written a book that ought to deeply trouble everyone who cares about the academy.