This post by Black Sheep really struck a cord with me. The gist of this rant is that the IP policies of universities basically rob students of what rightfully belongs to them (their ideas, or at the very least credit for their ideas) sucking creativity out of students for the institutions benefit without doing much to push a little creativity back.
In other words, schools get to take both your money and your ideas, and in return given you a cheaply mounted piece of paper. That’s really a minor version of trading a handful of beads for Manhattan Island. How do they get away with this?
The problem is not that you’re going to come up with the next killer product idea that is worth millions–because you won’t. The problem is fairness, intellectual honesty, justice and sleaze.
When a professor takes one of your ideas, treats it as their own, gets a grant and some nice career boosting press for it, all without crediting you I think that’s unfair and dishonest. And I think the fact that institutions use obscure legal slight-of-hand to legally take advatage of unsuspecting and vulnerable students is both unjust and just plain sleazy. Hell even soulless corporations will put your name on thier patent if you contributed. Academia apparently berudges even this small token. That will be $50,000–thank you, come again!
So for all you potential design school students out there here’s some advice: check your school’s intellectual property policy before you give them any money.
And if you decide to attend d.school, here’s a suggestion: make friends with one or two professors (perhaps outside the design faculty) for both thier different perspectives and decent references. Otherwise do the absolute minimum amount of work for class–no one will ever check your grades. Save your best ideas for yourself and work on them on your own time, on your own computer, and off campus (if you use any school facilities, they own your idea). This way you get the piece of paper, and you keep the bastards from unjustly highjacking your creativity without giving you credit.
Better yet, say to hell with school. Just take 2 years off of work, keep all the money you would have spent on tuition, put a downpayment on a house, and do a pile of pro bono and self-expressive work. You will learn and grow more as a designer, and you’ll have a nice place to live in rather than an doomed marriage to sallie mae.
(Sorry about the recent tangents–I promise I’ll get back to design and innovation stuff now)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 🙂