The ownership of intellectual property has long been an issue in higher education. Formerly a university intellectual-property officer, I have been an interested observer and participant of these discussions for many years.
Traditionally, universities have not claimed ownership of published material, such as books or journal articles. Actually, the authors typically don't have ownership rights, either; the publishers do. Universities do not generally try to grab the authors' royalties, but an exception is where the publication is what is termed a "work for hire." A work for hire is a situation where someone is paid by the university spherically to write something (e.g., an instructor is given salary specifically to write a laboratory manual, or a staff member is paid specifically to write a computer-user's manual); this is NOT the situation where a faculty member writes a book --even on university time--as part of his/her teaching/research duties. With regard to inventions, universities vary greatly in how much ownership they claim. Some insist that anything invented by a university employee belongs to the university, which then has patent rights and the rights to at least some of the royalties resulting therefrom. Others claim ownership only if the invention was made using university resources. And others do not automatically claim ownership even if university resources were used. The proliferation of computer software as creative output of university employees has opened a new chapter in intellectual-property considerations, with universities' having a variety of policies, ranging among those indicated above for copyright and for patents. In many cases, the financial consequences are not great, but in other cases they can be very, very significant. Jerrold H. Zar, Ph.D. Department of Biological Sciences Northern Illinois University DeKalb IL 60115 ========================================= >>> "Arthur J. Kendall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 01/15/03 12:56PM >>> Another perspective on the ethics is that of intellectual property belonging to the prof as a professional. A teacher/instructor/prof is not an employee the same way a factory worker is. If there is a reason that money should not go to the prof shouldn't it just as well go to a charity. Isn't this part of the same problem as intellectual property going to any employer? In recent years increasingly many companies and universities grab onto the ideas of professionals and treat then as corporate property. Art =================== . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
