Are My Ideas Being Stolen? If So, What Then?

BinaryGrind writes "I just got started taking Computer Science classes at my local university and after reading Universities Patenting More Student Ideas I felt I needed to ask: How do I tell if any of my projects while attending classes will be co-opted by my professors or the university itself and taken away from me? Is there anything I can do to prevent it from happening? What do I need to do to protect myself? Are there schools out there that won't take my work away from me if I discover TheNextBigThing(TM)? If it does happen is there anything I can do to fight back? The school I'm attending is Southern Utah University. Since it's not a big university, I don't believe it has a big research and development department or anything of that ilk. I'm mostly wanting to cover my bases and not have my work stolen from me."

Comments

Unlikely

[sugarman]

If you "just got started taking Computer Science classes", I'd say its relatively unlikely that you need to be worried about IP theft. Your implementation of 'Hello World' probably isn't going to revolutionize computing.

This doesn't mean that it isn't something to be aware of in the future, especially as you get closer to your senior project or grad school work. Right now however, you probably should be more concerned with other classmates, depending on how draconian your school is with regards to similar / identical code beding submitted for projects. Learn what your institution's policy is, and you'll likely find the answer to your original question as well.

Re:Only the paranoid survive (not)

[CaptainPatent]

Exactly what I was going to say...

Did you steal my idea?