IP Rights For Games Made In School?

Gamasutra has a story questioning whether schools should be able to hold intellectual property rights on games created by students. The point out a recent incident in which a development team was unable to market a game they created, and another situation where a school overrode the creator's decision to withdraw the game from a contest. "What irks Aikman is that, after graduating, he and his team approached DigiPen, hoping it might change its policy and make an exception for the award-winning game, but the school wouldn't budge. 'They were dead set on not setting a precedent because, if they let us keep the IP, they were afraid other students would want the same. But I believe there's something wrong with the idea of DigiPen owning games it has no intention of doing anything with, while discouraging people like me who could really make use of our efforts and use it as a springboard to a career.'"

Comments

Schools - A distorted reality

[Gates82]

Schools play by their own rules regardless of how the world works. I view universities as a service I pay for. Therefore anything I create at a university (unless employed to work on) should inherently become my property. Even if I use school resources to create the item (I'm paying for those services). The one situation that may change this is if my education is being subsidized, such as at a state college. My feelings then is that the state should have a stake in ownership, not the university (they are not paying for it). And for other then military work the state should release the information into the public domain as it is paid for by tax dollars and should become the property of the people.

--
So who is hotter? Ali or Ali's Sister?

Re:Schools - A distorted reality

[Detritus]

If you don't like air pollution, you should have gone to another planet.

Re:Schools - A distorted reality

[Artraze]

> Even if I use school resources to create the item (I'm paying for those services)

While I do agree with you, this point here is problematic. While you are paying for the resources, you are (almost certainly) paying for educationally licensed versions of those resources. In short, if you were to commercialize something that they could prove you created using such resources, you could be sued for breach of contract.

Further, you also neglect to consider private contributions to universities. These usually represent rather significant portions of the budget, and can exceed a billion dollars in the case of particularly prestigious schools. As a result, no school can be considered to be funded entirely by the students, meaning that the school's resources are not entirely payed for by students anyway.

That being said, unless you are being paid to be there, they almost certainly have no claim to any IP created by a student, regardless of whether it's on the student's or the "university's time" (as the latter is being paid for by the student). The only possible argument to the contrary is that the university views the potential IP produced by the a student as additional compensation for their educational services.

There are interesting questions here though, namely what exactly a student pays for as part of their education. Intriguingly, I would have to say that a student has more claim to work they do for class than that they do otherwise, as the former is obviously part of the services they are paying for. Any university assistance on the latter, however, could very well be regarded as additional, unrelated services (e.g. consulting a professor, using software, etc).

As a final note: I am unaware of any school even attempting to assert ownership of IP created by liberal arts students, such as creative writings or art portfolios, etc. There may well be some definitive precedent within that area.

Re:Schools - A distorted reality

[Anonymous Coward]

When you pay for someone to do work you, you do *not* necessarily get the IP rights to that work. A notorious example is wedding photography -- you're paying for the photographer's time and a set of prints, but you do not have duplication rights. Those belong to the photographer, because it's considered an artistic work, just as if you hired a famous artist to paint a scene.

You're correct, but the situation with the photographer is not analogous to the situation with a University.u When you hire a wedding photographer, the photographer creates the "IP" (the wedding photos). But in Gates82's post, when he "hires" a university, it is not the university creating the IP (a game in this topic, but could be most anything else), but him instead. There's nothing wrong with your post, but it doesn't contradict anything Gates82 wrote.

However, Gates82 also believes that if he pays all of his own tuition and fees then whatever he produces should be his. However, at a public university, some portion of every student's costs are subsidized by the state, so the state might have some interest in anything he produces even if he pays his own way.

- T

Re:Schools - A distorted reality

[mazarin5]

Students hold the copyright for papers they write and the art they make, I don't understand how code is any different.

Re:Schools - A distorted reality

[TrancePhreak]

Part of the situation here is the game may have been made with hardware & software provided by the school. I went to this school also, one of the first things they tell you is to leave your good game ideas at home. The person in this article obviously didn't pay attention very well.

Re:Schools - A distorted reality

[mabhatter654]

except that my schools have always REQUIRED people to do their own original work. Therefore the work should remain mine. I believe the schools opinion is that they are "directing" the work, so the work you do is "work for hire" and assigned to them. They are directing the work you do.. you wouldn't have done it without their input as an assignment. Frankly, it's a corporate-style power grab to prevent students from benefiting when corporations "donate" large amounts of money to "help" students. In the case of many of the IP agreements in place with industry, perhaps the tax exemptions should be taken away from large schools and corporate donations as the rules do not benefits students anymore.

Re:Schools - A distorted reality

[mabhatter654]

yet schools can't manage to own the text books that professors write using student intern time.... Hummmm.

Re:Schools - A distorted reality

[guitarMan666]

Exactly. In fact, to spite my college, I tend to release all papers to the public domain or a permissive license and then upload them to Archive.org or some such. I know for a fact that at my college (St. Petersburg College) all liberal arts students get to keep IP of their work. As a music major, this is very important to me. I feel that what you create at school is yours unless your college states explicitly otherwise in writing. It's not right to exploit students. Period.

Re:Schools - A distorted reality

[Dutch Gun]

Well, reading the article can give a clue as to Digipen's arguments:

However, Claude Comair begs to differ. Comair, who founded the privately owned DigiPen in 1988, is its president and one of its owners. He is also a co-founder of the Nintendo Software Technology Corp., a division of Nintendo of America.

"Our policy, which has been our policy since day one and which is laid out in our student agreement, is very clear -- everything that is done within the school and presented as homework or as a product to be judged by a teacher ends up being the property of the school. IP, code, artwork, everything," says Comair.

"And, as a matter of fact, in my opening speech, I tell students that if there is something dear to them, they should not present it as homework."

That policy, Comair explains, isn't a casual one and, he feels, it has helped the school avoid many problems, especially misunderstandings between DigiPen and the games industry.

"We are not here to compete with the games industry," he says. "We are not here for people to come and make a game in a less-expensive manner utilizing equipment and software that has student licenses."

"Just as importantly, we are not equipped to properly firewall our projects in the sense that we really don't know legally speaking how many or which students created which games. We don't know whether they received input from other students who have not been credited."

"These are just a few of the reasons why we have this policy," he adds, "but the bottom line is that DigiPen has never sold any of its students' games nor do we intend to. Nor have we made any exceptions for students who tried to convince us to do so. They have come to us with so many very creative arguments that I recently had to say to them 'Please don't come anymore. I have your best interests at heart and I want you to go find good jobs after you graduate. But I simply cannot make exceptions.'"

I can understand how students attempting to monetize projects could create a lot of issues for the school. Essentially, the school would take on liability, because the games were created with their software, computers, and resources. They just can't open themselves up like that.

That being said, it's pretty obvious that Digipen is pretty permissive about allowing a company to hire all students, and create a commercial version of a student project. This is exactly what happened with Portal, and it's been a fantastic boon (in terms of publicity) for Digipen. They'd be insane to come down on the wrong side of this issue, as it would negatively affect the employment prospects of its graduates, which would ultimately hurt them.

reminder about copyrights

[Spazmania]

Just a reminder: it's really hard to pre-sign over copyrights to something except by being an employee of the institution in question. If these guys didn't sign a paper explicitly transferring the copyrights to the specific game then the institution doesn't own them. It might have a contract compelling them to sign the rights over. The contract might even be enforceable. But it doesn't -currently- own the copyrights.

Re:reminder about copyrights

[LrdDimwit]

Where I went to college they had a policy which you agreed to by enrolling, taking classes, and accepting credit; which said that anything you submitted for a grade or did because it was an assignment for a class you were taking was the school's property. Full stop. So they have in effect got a contract: your agreement to abide by the college's rules and regulations. Sure, it's a contract of adhesion, and the courts interpret these in the light most favorable to the person forced to agree. But fighting to overturn a clause in a contract is always tricky, and there's a significant chance you could lose.

Re:reminder about copyrights

[Spazmania]

If they say it *is* their property, they have nothing. That's not an enforceable contract.

If they say you agree to sign it over to them, that *may* be an enforceable contract.

Re:Oh dear god!

[Tubal-Cain]

I crap

Some things are just better if kept to yourself.

not cool

[pdwestermann]

isnt this the same as the school claiming to hold IP rights over all of the drawings I make in my art classes? i see no difference, but in that context it seems awfully ridiculous.

Re:not cool

[darrenbjohnson]

Schools typically own patents arising from student research because the research was funded by the school. Having recently discussed this topic at my university I was told by the school lawyer that for the school to own the IP of something you do as a student you would have to have used significant school resources in the development. A significant resource doesn't include the use of computers. So basically if you didn't get paid to do the project and you didn't use any funding from the school it is yours. I think these kids should talk to a lawyer. Even if it is clearly stated in the schools policy that they own all IP, I think it's on questionable grounds. Im paying them for a service and in no way am I employed by the university. The only way they could own it is if they have a signed contract stating that I will sign over all ownership/copyright and I do proceed to sign it over.

Where do I sign up?

[davidwr]

I'm just askin'.

relevant quote from article

[stormguard2099]

Here's from the president and founder of DigiPen:

"I am not saying that we will not change in the future," he adds. "But, in order to do that, we need to talk to the industry to see what they feel would be best. Our program advisory committee is made up of the best of the best companies in the world. So far," he says, "they are very happy with our policy."

Yeah, I'm sure there's no bias on that board whatsoever!

Re:hardly surprising

[thermian]

I'm currently a PhD student at a UK university and my uni has already said they will take any commercially expliotable IP from me as and when I make it - you didn't think intellectual property was created to help producers did you? This is despite the fact that they are being paid to have me there!

still, for me, if the uni doesn't take my IP then the government will, but that's less common

I made it a condition on accepting my Ph.D offer (a UK university also) that any software/algorithms I developed were mine, and mine alone to exploit/patent/copyright, and that I would release everything under either the GPL or a BSD license. They agreed, after all, a Ph.D. student is worth a lot in grant money.

I don't know why more students don't do this, after all, if they disagree and lose you, they lose your grant money too.

Now I've got three years worth of code to clean up and release, which is going to take a few months, when I have the time.

Permissive free software license

[troll8901]

That's easy.

1. Develop something at home with BSD License.
2. Continue developing in school using the same license.
3. Get the grades.
4. Fork a copy for commercial (private) development.
5. ???
6. Profit!

There goes my karma... and the schools will start agreeing with Steve Ballmer too.

Re:Permissive free software license

[Artraze]

A fun suggestion, but if a university does own the rights to your work, they could very simply disallow your contributions to be released under a given license (BSD in this case). You can't circumvent someone's ownership of something by transferring it to someone else. What you're suggesting here is the IP analogue of stealing something and claiming it's okay because you gave it to your friend (or the public; IP Robin Hood!).

This was an IGF winner

[MobyDisk]

The article fails to mention that Synaesthete won $2500 at the Independent Games Festival at the Game Developer's Conference in 2008. I wonder where the $2500 went? To the school? To the students? I guess it should go to the school since the school owns the game right? Or did they give it to the students because it is their game?

Re:This was an IGF winner

[Anonymous Coward]

What typically happens is that the students receive the money, but the school keeps the original award/plaques. DigiPen then makes copies of the very nice trophies for the respective students.

Meet with them privately and make a deal

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't want to set a precedent. Fine. Make them an offer, you buy the rights to your own game, perhaps for a nominal fee like a dollar, and then all parties involved sign non-disclosure agreements as to what the terms of the agreement were. They'd be smart to try to retain some equity in the game, might be a homerun, but still. IP law doesn't exist to stop the development of good idea, but to encourage them. Were they to actually go into court and argue the former, it's hard to see how they'd win.

Standard form contract

[tepples]

There is such a thing as a standard form contract. If all relevant players in an industry have the same requirement, then they don't "drive away talent" because there's nowhere else to drive the talent to. For example, which record label with access to FM radio promotion and retail distribution doesn't "drive away talent" by requiring its recording artists to hand over copyright in their recordings? You might as well have written this:

If you want to keep your IP, don't go to a school

Not as stringent as you might think...

[Anonymous Coward]

Being a digipen student myself, I have a unique perspective.

EVERY digipen student is well aware of the school's copyright policies. This happens well BEFORE any development on school games begin. As such, we know FULL well that any game or assignment we turn in is the full copyright of digipen.

HOWEVER, having discussed this at length with various professors (and heads of the game department), there are ways around this.

1) Any game you develop completely outside of digipen is yours free and clear. Provided that you did not use school resources (software from school counts as a resource as a the software has specific academic licenses tied with it).

2) Any game that you work on outside of school for another company is yours free and clear. BUT, most companies have you sign contracts signing over the copyrights to those games anyway.

I have worked on multiple titles while at digipen, and am working on something for myself. BUT, since none of these were for digipen - my professors tell me quite clearly that digipen has no claim.

Personally, I am quite miffed at the students who are bent out of shape over this policy. We have all signed the papers to attend school. We have all paid our tuition. We have all sat through the same lengthy lectures regarding digipen's right to copyright.

Think of it this way, if digipen has the right to tell you what game content can go in your game to be turned in, then of course they're going to make sure they have the right to see what happens with that game.

Don't use the school's resources

[Animats]

Unless you're an employee of the school, or use their equipment, you should own anything you do. Graduate students may be employees if they have an assistantship, but undergraduates usually are not.

I had some minor difficulties with Stanford over a similar issue in the mid-1980s. I was a Stanford student, wasn't using any Stanford equipment, and wasn't a Stanford employee. There was some huffing and puffing from the Stanford side, but they knew they had an unwinnable case. It worked out fine for me in the end. Stanford later changed their policy in that area, and I was told years later by a faculty member that I was partly responsible for that. The new policy is in some ways worse and in some ways better; Stanford wants a cut, but they'll help market the technology, and if they don't, the inventor gets it back. This is often a win for students. Stanford has very close connections with the Silicon Valley venture community and a track record in licensing technology. Stanford owns a piece of Sun, Cisco, Yahoo, and Google under this deal.

It's much worse if you're arguing over IP rights with some school that doesn't routinely do IP deals. The school administration is likely to be both overbearing and clueless.

Different schools have different placement

[tepples]

What a waste. Go to a university, get a BS in Computer Science and make your own games.

And get whom to make the models, textures, maps, and audio? And then get whom to pitch the playable prototype to publishers?

You are going to a game school and making a game for that school. What do you expect?

At a game school, I would expect a game-oriented job fair, game development internships, and other ways of making contacts in the video game industry. The school where I earned a BS in computer science didn't have that.

Just recode it

[QuantumG]

If it's a student project then you probably put, what, 2 days of effort into it? You're a geek with youth on your side, and you've probably written 100x as much code for your own amusement than you've written for a stupid assignment/competition.

Just recode it. You'll do it better the second time, anyway, and copyright doesn't cover ideas, just implementations.

Re:hardly surprising

[thermian]

I developed software that scans DNA looking for componants of genes. Its one of the most accurate methods currently available which is nice, but since my thesis was just submitted this year, and we've only got out two papers, its not exactly well known yet.

Re-working the software into a releasable product is not easy.