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Universities Patenting More Student Ideas
theodp writes "Working as a NASA intern, grad student Erez Lieberman had a eureka moment, resulting in an algorithm that detects whether a person is standing correctly or is off balance. Unfortunately, MIT liked it so much they decided to patent it. Seeking permission to use his own idea for his iShoe startup, which develops products like insoles to address the problems of seniors, Lieberman was told no problem — as long as he promised a hefty royalty and forked over a $75,000 upfront payment. Whether or not students are aware of it, the NYTimes reports that most universities own inventions created by students that were developed using a 'significant' amount of schools resources. Colleges and universities once obtained fewer than 250 patents a year, but that was before the Bayh-Dole Act gave them ownership of inventions developed through federally financed research. Now they acquire about 3,000 a year, and in 2006 licensing fees and equity in spinoff companies totaled at least $45B — research powerhouses like Stanford and NYU pocketed $61M and $157M, respectively."
I believe the justification for patents is that it encourages innovation, allowing products to come to market that would otherwise never see the light of day. To be honest, I have always been pretty skeptical, but it seems particularly difficult to square such a claim when inventors are prevented from using their own inventions. If MIT wants to patent its students' work, it should at least exempt those who had the idea in the first place from paying royalties.
Funny, I thought the whole tuition thing was your payment for using their academic resources and facilities? Otherwise, shouldn't they be paying students for their development work?
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I think a better idea might be to force federally-funded schools to do something similar to that. If the government is giving a researcher/professor/whatever a grant from taxes based on his or her past accomplishments, the university gets a huge chunk of it - unless I'm mistaken (and I very well could be.) For the university to then get whatever comes out of that is fundamentally stupid. From my experience, the university does nothing besides initially invest in the researchers. Well, that's not exactly true, they give me parking tickets occasionally too. I should say I'm a grad student, so I'm somewhat talking out of my ass here, and I might be biased (parking tickets!!!) but from what I can tell, the university gets more than their fair share.
There is a simple solution here:
If you have a realy good idea that you intend to start a business with then patent it before you submit your work!
You would have to do it anyway
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The stupid exploit the smart.
Please. Most university faculty are a looong way from stupid. That said, while I understand the argument that university resources are being used in the creation of these "inventions" (ideas), surely the fact that THE STUDENTS ARE ALREADY PAYING FOR USE OF THESE RESOURCES should mean that they owe the university nothing, and anything outside of normal coursework is theirs to call their own.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
So writing an algorithm on a computer is suddenly expensive and causing large costs to the university, that would justify patenting a potentially revolutionary algorithm, and not giving it back to the student? Let the Croatian universities dare patent or even copyright something I worked on, unless it was specifically for the university, or as part of university work.
In any case, this story teaches us something. Show only stupid ideas to the university, keep the others to yourself.