I’m no patent expert, but a not so recent article in the Times (recently highlighted on Slashdot) addresses how “colleges and universities own the ideas and technologies invented by the people who work for them, including professors and graduate students who are paid to do research.” This is a great revenue generator for cash-strapped institutions, but things get complicated when the inventor needs to obtain a license for their own idea, as happened to the student interviewed for the article.
Schools are by definition a place of learning, which is a process of self discovery. What does it mean for a school to own something that comes out of your head while you’re working or attending there? It’s true that these discoveries happen with the aid of school resources, but others might argue that the product of all of a school’s resources is learning (or at least maybe it should be).
Educational technologists have recently worried about student’s owning the copyight to their assignments (which now often appear online)–this is an interesting twist on a similar problem.
I’ll admit that my thoughts on this feel half-baked at the moment.