Intellectual Property Issues In College? 256
An Anonymous Coward with PhD prospects asks: "Next week several people from our computer science department will be meeting with the intellectual property lawyers who represent my university. The intent of the meeting is to get their opinions on various topics like: work for hire, UCITA, taking grad theses and selling them, and so on, and to grill them on the same. Many of us feel that we should have the right to GPL any code we produce, but the university makes lots of money off of licensing. They argue that code written by a school employee (and this usually includes grad students) is a work for hire and that the school should retain ownership and control. What do /. people think and can you all come up with other questions that I should ask?"
Re:If Linus' school had these policies... (Score:1)
U of Helsinki couldn't have the kind of policies US universites have or are proposing, because that would violate the Finnish copyright law.
Public Domain (Score:1)
In my opinion all software and scientific results of employees and students of publicly funded universities should be made public domain by state law. That would settle the dispute, and the universities would concentrate on serving the interests of science and the public.
While I prefer GPL myself, I think it is contradictory for university employees to claim copyright to their work and at the same time deny it to their employers.
Marko [mailto]
Indiana University (Score:1)
One of my employees was finishing up her senior year and asked her department chair to allow her to do her Senior Thesis based on work she was doing for my department. No problem on my end, but I told her she could count on me not helping much as this would count for her accademic goals. Normally I throw libraries that I've built over the years and rebuild my employees code up to my spec, but I kept this as a dual development process to avoid any problems she might have.
Two months after she graduates, I get a note from a friend telling me that her department is using the software we paid her for, and in turn charge the rest of the university for. I estimate we paid probably $15k over the year for her services. This department, with a much bigger budget now claims that they have the legal right to use the software as it was a Senior Project and her prof is now offering it to other departments and claiming it is his code.
Anywho, we had to pull up an outside arbitrator to get all this stuff straightened out. The School claims that even though we paid for it, her academic department is welcome to use this, can sell it, and the jerk that was her advisor is now claiming that it was his idea and actually programmed a good deal of this himself (heh...I hope he's reading this...) when I know for a fact the man is pretty much clueless when it comes to this type of programming - I've had to stop by his office on several occasions to get this software working for her because he didn't even know how to properly set up his server, let alone design an app like this.
Anywho, its a big problem. Universities think they own anything programmed by their students. The big claim was that the department puts in a lot of 'outside' help to teach these students. I actually thought part of the money you paid for classes went to being able to get outside help...not that anywas given in this instance...I had most of this profs class coming to my office asking for help. I'm just glad I didn't have this student doing anything for any of the companies I regularly consult for or they would have 'legally' tried ripping this from us as well.
Word to the wise, if you are doing anything that you don't want the university to own, do it on your own computers, don't show it to any professors, don't transmit it over university email systems, don't do anything that has anything to do with the university. Do some bullshit projects, do some semilegit research kinda parallel to what you really want to do, and do the rest on yor own time.
Ok, its time to do the Anonymous Post thing because while my boss agrees with me, we have to deal with idiots all across campus, and I have to deal with people who are actually pretty damn intelligent that might also get caught up in the crossfire. Sad isn't it...and this might have made up for some of the Flamebait Points I lost yesterday
Do you pay tuition? (Score:1)
If they claim that you are 'hired' and thus it's their code...ask for your tuition back and a pay check.
P-
UNM and similar situation (Score:1)
I think this will be more and more of an issue at big 'U's in the coming years as more and more schools sell their research work for millions and millions of dollars. If this school is allowed to put it's name on research done there, expect most/all research to move from schools to companies before too long.
Re:School Employee... (Score:1)
I didn't, and most comp. sci. grad students don't. Instead they get some sort of assistanceship or fellowship. If it is a research assistanceship, they help work on a professor's project for ostensibly 20 hours a week, and do schooling in the rest of their time.
In this case, it is quite reasonable for the work done on assistanceship time for the research project to be considered "work for hire", where by default ownership automatically transfers to the hirer. I believe this is the default for U.S. employment.
Note, however, this is completely unrelated to being a student, or work done outside the sphere of the specific research assistanceship project. The sole claim the university may have to that is if its facilities are used for that work, and that's a much more tenuous claim.
(All this is U.S. only, YMMV)
Re:Do they pay for the work? (Score:1)
As a graduate student, I had the possibility of a teaching assistanceship, a research assistanceship, or a fellowship. Any of the three would pay my tuition plus a (low, but livable) stipend (effectively, a salary.)
Undergraduate students rarely if ever get paid, although tuition can be reduced or free from various scholarships.
Threaten 'em with unionization (Score:1)
Point out to them that insisting that you're working for hire means you're employees, and therefore entitled to organize. If they're antsy about grad-student unions, that might be an effective stick.
Then again, the recent NLRB decision [cnn.com] may may lead them to believe it's a lost cause, and they'll just take the unionization hit to claim your work---it depends on how badly they foam at the mouth thinking of organized students.
Another possible solution. (Score:1)
When working on your graduate projects, make sure to link GPL code into the project. Use some GPL'ed library for something or another (I was going to use the Mersenne Twister code as an example, but I realized it's LGPL. Oops.) and then if the college ever wants to profit from your code, they have to make the source availible. Doesn't give you any profits from your code, but it effectively sticks a poison pill in it so that the College doesn't get all that much either.
A Coders Contract (Score:2)
Okay, onto life:
I've been pondering this for a while: Who gets to keep the code and the ideas? I'm more business-centric since that's where I've been for the last 5 years, and I'd be curious how people see this relating to the school-slave positions (TA, grad, tech, or otherwise). Basically, though, I'm saying that whenever we work for someone else (as consultant or otherwise), there are some HUGE assumptions people make about requirements and behaviour just because that's how everyone is doing it. So unless you're very, very lucky and were able to negotiate out of some assumptions when you started, you're still a Coding Slave.
What I'm proposing now is that we develop a new contract, perhaps a Coder's Union Contract, that does things a tad differently. There should be 2 basic versions:
1) The company pays the Coder for his/her time. Hopefully this results in a finished project/subproject, but whatever code is produced (during the paid for time) was licensed to the company from the Coder with as many rights as current law gives any licensing of software (ie. include those disclaimers and the company can never complain). The Coder keeps all rights to the code and ideas produced during that time. Perhaps it should even get a "digital watermark" so you always know whose code you've just come across.
Variations on this include being able to use it for a certain time before paying fees, optional service contracts for upkeep, and even having the code licensing being a separate contract from the "pay for time" contract. It should probably also include non-disclosure agreements with the companies so that no one the Coder speaks to about their ideas can ultimately use said ideas without the Coder's permission.
2) The Company pays the Coder for their results. Anything created in the interim including analysis, diagrams, design, testing procedures, pitched code and any ideas used are all off limits to the Company.
Variation: millions, including what's currently ASSuMEd to be the "correct" way to do business - the Company keeps everything and the Coder has no rights. Not even, it seems, to code that can be shown to others as proof of the Coder's proficiency.
Discuss amongst yourselves.
As for the Artist's hypothecal posed earlier, imagine the situation when an artist does a piece of commissioned work: the ideas that the artist used for the piece are the artists property even if some of them get expressed through the artwork. Sometimes the commissioning isn't for the painting itself but for a copy of the art: a slide or electronic copy of the piece, and sometimes it's just so it can be shown for a few months at a specific location. There are all variations in the commercial world. However I do agree that from within School artwork is the artist's to do with as they please!
Universities are different (Score:2)
However, universities are not for-profit businesses. They are non-profit and have a special place in society. They have a higher mission and consequently get special benefits (no taxes).
As part of a university's mission to benefit society, they hire faculty and encourage them to benefit society. One way they do this is by letting faculty write books and sell them, keeping the profit. This arrangement has existed far longer than computers. It encourages people to write books, which benefits society. Note, the professor keeps the copyright, despite being paid by the university.
Now, software, like books, come under copyright. Why are programs treated differently by universities, then? Isn't it good for society for the university to encourage faculty and graduate students to write programs that will benefit us all?
Obviously, the university is doing this out of greed. This is not appropriate for a university, which is supposed to serve society, not make money.
Here's a particularly difficult case: electronic coursework. Suppose a professor and grad student develop an interactive digital textbook + problem sets. This is rather like a book. Do the authors own the copyright or does the university? If the professor moves to another university, can he/she take the program and use it to teach there? This very issue is being fought out, today, at universities around the world.
One more thing: a CS grad student who is getting $12,000 a year is indeed getting paid, but it is a slave salary. It would be easy for the student to get 5-10 times as much in industry. So the grad student is actually doing the university a favor.
Re:Work for Hire (Score:2)
I'm not doing any major (scientific) projects though, mostly internal applications that are used for administration and such. Perl, MySQL, etc. I've thought about what license our code falls under, but I think it's pretty clear that such decisions are out of our hands, and we're working on a work-for-hire basis. Since the stuff I'm doing isn't that groundbreaking, that doesn't bother me. The workplace is simply better off for having these things coded, and the question of "who owns them" doesn't really come up. Sure, I could wipe out every extant copy except for tape backup and quit, and people would become very upset, but just because I have power over the code's usage doesn't mean I have authority to do so.
I appear to be rambling. Well, there you have it.
Here's the agreement/policy from where I work: (Score:2)
The University of Connecticut owns any invention conceived by its employees in the performance of customary or assigned duties involving the use of University facilities, staff, or any other University resources.
Employees are required to disclose any and all inventions to the University of Connecticut Research Foundation, which is responsible under the State statues for the disposition of patent rights. Under these statues, a minimum of 20% of the amount of net proceeds from the sale, licensing, or other disposition is to be shared with the inventor. At present, the inventor's share is 33.3% of net proceeds."
Also, just as an example, you might want to read through the UConn's Policies & Procedures Governing Sponsored Projects [uconn.edu], which covers things like copyrights on music, art, and software. That's all under the "Technology Transfer" secion.
Schools teach "code reuse" but prosecute plagarism (Score:2)
Re:This doesn't happen in the art departments! (Score:2)
Re:That's not entirely true. (Score:2)
Re:Sorry folks, but... (Score:2)
Re:This doesn't happen in the art departments! (Score:2)
--
Re:No contract? (Score:2)
Yes, but there are some clauses in the contract which are vague.
IMHO, They've effectively said that "we own everything you do, say or work on which may be considered to be in competition with anything we do anywhere in the world".... "Within the limits of the law"
I'm pretty sure the laws would frown on a tech support person being sued by IBM for independantly developing Linux code. Especially if IBM did not pay for equipment, training, or anything even slightly related to what the person was doing in their own spare time.
It is a spooky document though. I know of a few people who refused to sign it, and nothing has appeared to come of it. If you're getting hired by IBM, try asking "Is signing this paper a condition of my employment?" and get an authoritative answer.
On a similar note, you can get your manager to contact the legal dept to find out if you can work on X, Y or Z, without the company chasing after you. And the contract also has some stipulations about charity which makes it far less restrictive if you aren't trying to profit from it.
An IBM lawyer would be the person to ask though. Maybe they could post an anonymous reply... so long as the proxy server isn't watching :-)
simple contract logic (Score:2)
If you want to retain ownership of your code, make that a condition of your study there. Just say, "I'll do my grad work here, and pay out the nose for it, but *I* get to keep my code etc".
...
Which brings up another point: graduate students are *customers* of the school, not *employees*. Policies that apply to faculty etc should not have anything to do with students (who are not also employees).
MoNsTeR
...and another thing (Score:2)
Columbia University (Score:2)
I was paid off a DARPA as well as NSF and IBM grants. The university tried to get students on grant money to sign invention assignment agreements; I refused. Nonetheless, I believe the university does have an entitlement to some portion of the research I did. These kinds of laws vary state-by-state. For instance, in California, it is illegal for companies to claim ownership on work you do on your own time using your own equipment.
Re:No contract? (Score:2)
As an aside, I'm a co-op student at an IBM company, and I'm under one of these contracts. I certainly can't speak for IBM policy or anything like that, but all I have to do to work on an outside project is ask for permission to have it excluded from the contract--it's reasonably easy to do.
Work for hire? Nonsense (Score:2)
Purpose of Job as Grad Student (Score:2)
Doesn't the purpose of your job have something to do with this?
The grad students I knew were not paid by the university to write their thesis work, they were paid because of the other work done as part of being a grad student: lecturing, tutoring, grading papers, etc.
If, on the other hand, a grad student is employed by the network administrators, and writes a backup utility, then the University might have dibs on it. On the gripping hand, if [s]he was researching efficent protocols to backup systems over a network, then maybe not.
At any rate, it's all being driven by money. Universities want to cash in.
Fortunately for Computer Science, a lot of the most interesting work (to me anyway) is moving onto the Internet. People like me get interested in particular areas, and just start working together. I don't have a thesis advisor, nor do I take classes. I read about stuff, and start thinking about it. I don't need to go to school anymore. Most of the stuff I need to learn is on the Internet anyway.
Work for hire? (Score:2)
--Jim
It's very simple... (Score:2)
--
Americans are bred for stupidity.
Business vs. government (Score:2)
Stop accepting taxpayer money; either make a profit, or go out of business.
Then they can take the things they produce on my dime and start requiring me to pay again if I want to use them.
They accept taxpayer money, they work for the taxpayers; if they produce something, it was a work for hire belonging to the taxpayers.
Not the University, not the Government; the taxpayers themselves.
-
just start a company (Score:2)
fighting over, then start a company and move on.
I've seen hundereds of students do this.
Its fairly easy to get startup resources in
today's tech environment. Any previously written
stuff at the university is probably have to morph considerably to achieve commercial standards.
dividing the revenue pie (Score:2)
Another idea is to start a company, but allow the university to by 10% for a year's salary of the employee.
Ironically Stanford University showed little interest in the student and staff projects that eventually became Sun MicroSystems, CISCO and Yahoo when offered a cut.
Re:Well, when I was in school... (Score:2)
When I was in school, student projects became the Sun-I microcomputer, first CISCO router, SGI geometry engine, and Yahoo directory.
None of great interest to the parent university.
Re:I agree with the university (Score:2)
If Linus' school had these policies... (Score:2)
How much of the free software we use daily was written by students and academics?
Re:But who do you work for... (Score:2)
Practically speaking, one cannot place something that the university considers as belonging to itself into public domain. But one can place it under the GPL merely by building it from a GPL'd code base. Then, even though the university does end up owning it, the code is GPL'd unless the university contacts the original authors of the components and gets waivers from them (i.e., alternate licenses). Of course, they could refuse to accept the project, but that's unlikely, as the professor usually doesn't have close ties with the business office, and even the business office doesn't usually care (at least not until a few years later). The question might then become "do you have a legitimately obtained copy of the binary code?" It seems like the answer would have to be yes, if you are indeed the actual author. But laws are written by legislators and interpreted by courts. Sense doesn't necessarily have much to do with how things get interpreted. So you may not have any rights to it. But the code, were it to be released, would still need to be released under GPL.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:Work for Hire (Score:2)
The more significate your contribution, the more important this is.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:Here's a question: (Score:2)
The best suggestion so far is to include within the body of your work items that have been previously GPL'd by someone else. That way it MUST be GPL'd, and it doesn't matter too much who got the copyright of the new derivative work.
Of course, they could still refuse to accept it, and this doesn't do anything for patents, but it's a start.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:Here's a question: (Score:2)
While IANAL, having read many nice books on the topic, including If it is determined by a court that your thesis is a work for hire, then any licenses you distributed it under would be held null and void, because you were not the copyright holder. Remember, GPL depends on copyright law to work. If you don't have copyright, you can't GPL it. (And if it is a work for hire, then you don't have copyright.) Sorry, dem's da breaks.
If my thesis is considered the University's work for hire, what will be the penalties imposed on me for speaking about my thesis in public? Is there a grace period during which I can legally speak about my thesis?
Oh, you can *certainly* speak *about* your thesis. Ideas are not copyrightable, on the exact expression of them. Just like I can speak about a book that you wrote (as long as I don't claim to have written it), you could speak about a thesis that you wrote for the University. I'm not sure if you can claim you wrote it, though. But again, IANAL.
After I hand in my thesis, is it legal for me to think about my thesis, or must I stop thinking about it until I have legally purchased a copy?
Was this intended to be a joke?
Re:But who do you work for... (Score:2)
You might not even have to do that. Some university CS departments allow/encourage their grad students to release code under the GPL as a matter of course. If you built a list of such schools and presented it at the meeting, perhaps your department would "see the light" without the application of bs.
If you go to various universities' CS departments' research pages, you'll find that in many cases you can download papers and the code that supports the model or experiment that the paper reports on.
You should try to get that built into your school's official policy. Most schools have a mandate to educate the public, and much grad research is funded by the NSF anyway.
Ask where we would be if mathematicians had been patenting their work for the last 400 years. Science is built on sharing.
Completely untrue. (Score:2)
Now, many employment contracts DO state that employers DO own your thoughts.. but that's between you and your employer. If it's not in writing, they don't own it.
RE: Request for Questions (Score:2)
1. Is there state/federal legistlation that states that college/university "students" are considered employees of the college?
2. Does the college require the student to sign a contract that states that the student is considered an employee?
3. Assuming:
- the purpose of a university is to purchase an education,
- the university will require proof that the student is receiving the education being purchased
4. Drawing off of questions 1 and 2, does intellectual property I create while on school premises or school property belong to the school? I believe that the premises and the property fall under more of a lease from the school.
I'm sure I could think of some more, but I really need to have these answers first before I spin my wheels.
--------
"It is one thing to show a man he is in error, and another
Re:Oxymoron... (Score:2)
If it's graduate work, then it belongs to the university. If you have to do it for school, it belongs to the school, unless you claim a prior copyright... but for work done specifically for an academic career, it should belong to the school. Otherwise, I think schools would be more inclined to hire grad students as employees rather than give them a graduate program to follow...
BTW many colleges (and jobs) come up with the funding for graduate students' educations, hence anything the graduate student does on the companies' time should belong to them, not the student. It's only fair that way.
Again, if you have an idea THAT GOOD, don't submit it as a project. Save it for another time, or quit school/work entirely. Invariably, someone else will take all the meaningful credit and/or the money for the idea.
Re:This doesn't happen in the art departments! (Score:2)
What a scam... (Score:2)
P.T. Barnum would be proud of the fraud that schools and their lawyers are getting away with.
I'm glad I don't have to go to college these days...
Grading (Score:2)
But then they wanted me to sign over any patents or copyrights I might gain while employed by the University. Now, given the position this was for, this is flat-out ridiculous. I refused to sign.
Re:IT'S NOT THE SAME THOUGH.... (Score:2)
Bullshit. I was a grad student for 7 years and never got one cent from the university.
GPL and Work for Hire (Score:2)
Sharing is becoming the norm, sigh (Score:2)
My opinion is that you should fight it tooth and nail. The "work for hire" doctrine is intended for situations where an employer gives you specific direction: "I want you to build an airplane that goes 550 knots or better and carries between 400 and 500 passengers." It isn't intended to apply to situations where they say "Go and think of cool things, but if you come up with anything commercially viable, I want a cut because I was buying your pizza."
Read that FINE PRINT ! (Score:2)
Did you specifically waive the rights for ownership of the code you write, while hired?
In the "real" world, the company owns the right for any code that you write BECAUSE you gave them your permission to. (The fact that you are on company time, using their computers is irrelevant.)
i.e.
While I was an undergrad, even though we used the "universitie's computers", any code we wrote was ours, because we never signed anything that said otherwise. (Copyright is automatically applied to the author when no previous agreements are in force.)
To get to the bottom of the issue, you want the lawyers to specifically find where the "ownership clause" is currently mentioned in ALL contracts that employees sign, to sort the mess out.. (You had to sign SOME legal documents before you could work either as employee or contractor, right?!) so check that fine print!
In the future, you school should explicity have a clause added, stating, who owns what,to prevent future mis-understandings (and frivoulous lawsuits.) Typically, a business will say something along the lines of "anything invented on company time becomes property of the company" which is reasonable and standard practice. (I have even heard of some idiots trying to claim all previous inventions of yours as their own when you sign!)
Summary: Read the fine print, Know your rights, and Understand what you are signing your name too !
Cheers
The Kept University (Score:2)
I urge anyone interested in these issues to read this article [theatlantic.com].
questions to ask... (Score:2)
2. did you do the work using the school's resources such as network and computing power?
3. are you a college employee where your IP is considered part of your work?
there's probably more...
That's not entirely true. (Score:2)
In many film depts. for example, the university explicitly owns copyright on work created. My undergrad college sold a video piece I had worked on (and which I and my collaborators had contributed our own money toward making, and received no compensation for other than course credit). So I was very cautious when I selected my graduate school to make sure the students/faculty owned their own work at the school I chose.
I am now faculty at my former graduate school (an art school with a film dept.), and although students/faculty still own our own work, ambiguous issues still come up constantly. For example, software vendors sometimes require that they can use student images to promote their product in exchange for giving the school a software donation. Does that mean that any specific student would be required to allow his/her images to be used by a software vendor against his/her will or without his/her knowledge, or only that the school will dig up *somebody* whose images can be used. On the other hand, the school has its own preferences regarding which students' work will be given to the vendor, since the images used promotionally will be representing the school in addition to the vendor.
So it is definitely a slippery issue, even in the arts.
How broad is this? (Score:2)
For that matter, what if you wrote code that really sucked? Or a virus? If they want to lay claim to everything else you write, they'd sorta have to take that too.
This is an interesting problem and I'm curious to hear how it turns out.
How the hell? (Score:2)
So let me get this straight, when I do research for a university, I am a employee, thus work-for-hire applies... but if I play sports, I'm not an employee, thus cannot collect workman's compensation when being injured? That is bull.
Re:No contract? Almost a recursive problem. (Score:2)
Probably the easiest way to do it would be to assign (partial) rights to counter-sue to the company that's being sued for using the code.
IANAL. My sister is, but she doesn't talk to me.
`ø,,ø`ø,,ø!
Re:Another possible solution. (Score:2)
`ø,,ø`ø,,ø!
Re:IT'S NOT THE SAME THOUGH.... (Score:2)
`ø,,ø`ø,,ø!
Think about it (Score:2)
Sure it's legit. Think about it. Your the boss at some new company, and a coder working for you comes up with some whiz-bang new idea while working for you. You start dumping huge cash into advertising, money signs in your eyes. Now, the coder quits and decides to do this on his own. Were it that he owned the code and not you (because he did this for work and on company time) he could sue your ass for loyalties. But, since you own it, the shoe is on the other foot.
Now, I know this is a different situation.. kinda. You work for them. My Sister-in-law is a Masters student in Biotech. and the university is paying her. They may be a (partially) publicly funded school, but they still do make money from what you do. In all fairness, you should be getting a good bonus if they are making all kindsa cashish. But, that would require morals.
I think it comes down to... (Score:2)
Re:No contract? (Score:2)
Absent an employment relationship, that's the situation.
In the early 1980s, my Master's project at Stanford was sold by Autodesk as a commercial product, which worked out very well. There was some grumbling from Stanford when I turned in the code listing with "ILLEGAL COPY IF NOT IN RED" stamped in huge red letters on every page. But all they did was bitch; eventually they gave me a degree. Eventually, I made a big donation to the university, so in the end, everybody was happy.
I had the advantage, though, that I was never an employee of the university. I was going part time while working elsewhere. This is an option worth considering in CS, where you can make better money working for a real company.
don't give them a choice (Score:2)
education (Score:2)
Correct me if I am wrong, but a college is a educational organization, right? They are in the bussiness of educating the people that pay a good (dam good) price to attend. These people pay out of ass for a decent education, they pay alot, so that they may learn alot in a short period of time.
GPL software would help colleges, atleast the CS students attending these colleges better educate themselves about their subject of interest.
College are not, or atleast should not be, in the bussiness of the "bottom line" mentality of the corperate world.
People pay really HIGH PRICES to attended college, they are their to learn. They are not their to make the college money. If the college is lacking on money they should raise the fee's required to attend the college.
CS students are their to learn like everyone else, their is no need for the colleges to exploit them, stress them and jade them before they even get into the real world.
If you right a book as an ungrad, is that the school's right to market that book? If you write a term paper, does the school have the right to sell that to the local newspaper for cash?
Just because you can make huge amounts of money exploiting geeks, doesn't mean that you always should.
If the colleges are having troubles paying their billings, they should raise tution. If the colleges are fine money wise their is no reason for them to be so greedy. They are in the bussiness of teaching, not making money.
As you can tell from my grammer and spelling, I never attended college. When I do finally get a chance to go to college I will have to pay a high price for it. When I am there, I am there to learn, not make money for the college. If the college wants me to make money from them, they have put in a job offer like everyone else.
Treat Schools Like Businesses. (Score:2)
Treat Schools Like Businesses, because that's what they are. Now, it sounds to me like some school employees (aka grad students) are unsatisfied with their contracts. What do employees do when the are unsatisfied with their contracts? The options are simple: quit to find something better, or organize a union and seek a better deal via collective bargaining and/or a strike.
Indeed, there have been a few cases in recent years where graduate TAs have organized and gone on strike.
Personally, I regard the arguments placed by schools about the persuit of knowledge for its own sake to be largly a fiction, propotated by those in power in order to maintain their power and exploit those under their control.
The NCAA is a prime example. Student-athlete? Ha! More like a bunch of guys getting payed less than minimum wage and helping the company bring in millions of dollars. Same goes for coders.
Re:But who do you work for... (Score:2)
That is a question, and an interesting one, but it's hardly the only question. There's also a serious issue of scholarly integrity. If the work is being done with the intent of publishing it as a scholarly work (as would be the case in a Journal article or PhD dissertation), there is a serious question about the importance of making the source code available. I am personally extremely skeptical of any scientific or technical publication which does not give sufficient details of the methods used that another researcher can replicate the results. In the case of software, that pretty much means that the source code must be available for others to examine and further develop.
That pretty much requires some sort of source code licensing. It might very well not be a pure Free Software license- it might be restricted to academic use, require citation of the original paper in the event that further developed versions were published subsequently, etc.- but the code must be available for other researchers to hack on. I can certainly think of some specific researchers in my field (who shall remain nameless here) who have published papers critically dependent on software that they declined to make available, and I remain highly skeptical of their data as a result.
GPL (Score:2)
Re:Hello? Reselling is the *point* (Score:2)
Besides, this is all going under the assumption that the university has a legal right to claim ownership of the stuff you produce in class anyway. I don't recall ever signing a contract mentioning that when I was in college. In the absense of such an agreement, the stuff I produce is mine and mine alone, and aside from 'fair use' (and the implicit permissions I'm giving the prof by turning my work in), they have no right to my works.
Re:No contract? (Score:2)
No (Score:2)
Thus, a company can control an application based on GPL'ed code with proprietary/copyrighted additions and do whatever they want with it, so long as it stays within the company. They can't sell it nor can they make it available to anyone else without making the whole thing GPL'ed and giving up the source of their proprietary changes.
Re:But who do you work for... (Score:2)
Re:Follow the money (Score:2)
It all depends when the work was done. If it was done during the time they were being paid, then yes, it should belong to the university. However, if it was done on personal time, it shouldn't.
In my case, I did some contract work for an ISP (2nd level support). While times were slow, I rewrote some script files we used for retrieving customer information. I can't remember what the originals were in, but they could literally take 5 minutes to retrieve basic info like username, mail alias, mailbox size, etc. I rewrote them, using both shell scripts and PERL, and found my scripts would run in 5-10 seconds, a definite improvement. Now admittedly, these were nothing fancy, not much more than a few grep statements and some output modifying, but as far as I was concerned, they were property of the ISP. The time I spent writing them was paid for by them. It wasn't what they were paying me to do, but that's still the way I feel about it. Once I showed the scripts to the admins (and pointed out that I could no longer get root if they switched to my scripts) it was a pretty quick switch over.
Re:Here's a question: (Score:2)
Universities and code ownership (Score:2)
Re:Schools teach "code reuse" but prosecute plagar (Score:2)
Scotland is as bad... (Score:2)
Any work done for exams (including coursework) in secondary school in Scotland is the property of the SQA [sqa.org.uk]. Fair enough, you might say, but for my Higher Still project I'm wanting to do something useful (maybe XSL / SVG to PDF). I won't be allowed to release it under GPL. I have to say that it is the property of the SQA and get their permission to publish my own work.
Is this right?
It gets worse. (Score:2)
Professors, and the institutions, are asserting an intellectual property right to a student's notes on the content of lectures. They're dreaming. No such right exists.
Intellectual property rights only apply to ideas that have been reduced to fixed form. Fixed form means "written down" or "recorded"--only the fixed form of an idea is protected by copyright, the idea itself is not. Until the idea is reduced to fixed form it is just so much hot air.
For example, suppose I get up on stage and present a hilarious, moving expression--in rap--of the tribal customs of my ancestors (Scots) entitled "Getting Naked and Painting My Body Blue". If I have written those rap lyrics down beforehand, I can assert an intellectual property right. If you copy them down and repeat them, I can sue. But if I just start shouting extemporaneously, I have no rights--the words have not been reduced to fixed form.
An excellent example of this was Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech. Consider how many times you have heard that speech. Now ask yourself--why don't Dr. King's children collect royalties on that speech? They can't--King spoke extemporaneously. The written copies of the speech were made from film footage of the event.
In the case of classroom notes the situation is made even easier--the written notes reflect the creative work of the note-taker. Suppose that you and I attend a lecture by Prof. Chris Berman [go.com] at the University of Bristol [go.com]. My notes might include lots of information about what Berman wore, what the lecture hall looked like, whether he looked smaller or larger than he appears on TV, and what the general reaction of the audience was. Your notes might indicate what Berman actually said. The difference between my notes and yours is the creative content that you and I add. And what each of us reduces to fixed form is our intellectual property.
But wait, there's more...
The university isn't just wrong in asserting that it owns the rights to the notes--it is wrong to assert in its code of conduct that students do not. Unless a student surrenders his intellectual property rights to all creative work when he enrolls, the university is infringing upon his rights to dispense with his property (his creative work) for however much he can make.
The university is blowing smoke.
--
General thoughts from the trenches (Score:2)
The general rule is that univerities have the rights to all work produced by faculty and students at the university. When possible, the university will license technology to companies, and part of the proceeds are paid to the inventor e.g. the student.
Is this reasonable? Consider:
- grad students are generally paid by the school
- the school's equipment is generally used by the student for the work
- the work is being produced for the school as a requirement for the degree
From a pragmatic standpoint, grad students are in the employ of the university, which provides funding and equipment for the work. That they lay some claim to it is not unreasonable.
So, what to do if you want it to be all yours, to do with as you desire (GPL, sell, bequeath to your cats)? IANAL, but my sense is that the work must be done on your own time, on your own equipment, and be unrelated to your academic research.
For those considering grad school, and anticipate generating important work, it might be worth talking to students and faculty about a prospective school's attitude towards technology licensing issues. Some schools (ahem)UR(cough) are pretty thick, obtuse, and uncooperative, making it plain difficult to license your work. The school might compensate the student generously, or perhaps miserly, from licensing fees. Also, it may depend on the specific funding: coporate funding may entail free access to all work produced under the grant, fellowships may have stipulations regarding who claims the work.
Finally, it will also depend on the attitude of the faculty. If a group of respected faculty push for certain policies (better licensing fees, freedom to GPL, etc), the university may be more willing to meet those desires.
-----
D. Fischer
My question (Score:2)
There's a good reason for... (Score:2)
On the matter of copyright, I know that when I submitted my dissertation, there was a requirement to have it copyrighted by the university (U of North Carolina in this case). However, given that I had done my dissertation research at a US government lab (NIEHS), and any publications from the US government are automatically in the public domain, I didn't have to (indeed could not) copyright my dissertation. What it all comes down to is what the contract you signed says, particularly if you are a research assistant as opposed to a teaching assistant.
Peculiar side-effect of uni capitalism (Score:3)
Yet, at the same time, look at how many stories people are telling of "Oh, I had a good idea and the college was fighting me for it- so I dropped out and made a company and now I am Cisco" *g*
Okay, so that's exaggerated. But there are two points here:
- As 'brain drain' from universities continue and corporate requirements on universities tighten, universities will be less and less able to provide an education that is worth money in the real world. It'll be like waving an McSE when applying for a serious admin job: the university degree will be evidence that the person isn't good enough to have dropped out and gone commercial.
- By the same token, there's a subtler effect that I think is being largely ignored. 20 years ago it would have seemed radical to drop out of college and start a business- now you have colorful characters like Larry Ellison fulminating and inciting students to do this, AND he is an unbelievably rich man. It's becoming culturally expected for the _really_ sharp individuals to drop out and strike out on their own. This means that for the first time that I'm aware of, there is serious backing for a person's decision to drop out- and a lot of evidence to show doubters. It used to be a stigma. Now, if you're smart and trying to start a business (rather than dropping out due to apathy) your public image can be that of a potential Larry Ellison, and you can quote Ellison and recite lists of billionare dropouts to justify your decision.
- Finally, at the same time as this cultural change, the universities themselves are making it substantially more difficult to justify using them as a step in your personal growth- not only is it very expensive, not only is it increasingly unlikely that you'll get anything resembling an unbiased and truthful education, but if you are trying to get a head start on your career by using your youth and energy to think and learn and invent new things to build your future on, the university will pirate your work out from under you. This forces you to only do useless work at university- in some cases it may force you to stop thinking entirely for fear that the uni will lay claim to what you invented on your own time. So you are paying them to impede your growth, progress and learning.
I dropped out of college myself- over 10 years ago- 'before it was fashionable' you might say, but I could also say 'before it was obligatory'! Honestly, reading this thread and the things people are saying, it's horrifying. I hope people are ready to educate themselves, and willing to put in some effort towards getting a well rounded education as well- because at this point I couldn't recommend higher education for anybody. Yes, it's hurtin' as things stand, funding is desperately bad and dedicated teachers etc. deserve some sympathy- but when you look at these appalling IP costs and risks the whole thing reminds me of the record industry- i.e. "just say YAAAAH! NO WAY!"Did you sign a contract to that effect ? (Score:3)
Can they take your work away without this? Also there is the question of "who owns a thesis". Those have been around for centuries. Back in the old days could a student sell his thesis as a book ? If so then the same aplies to any work done for grades.
Work done for cash is a diferent matter altogather and I don't see how a university wold be diferent from a private business. I.e. They have to make you sign this away.
As for the matter of GPL. This isn't actualy relevant. He who owns the code chooses the license. If you can GPL it you can also BSD it or attach an BSA stile EULA.
Re:Here's a question: (Score:3)
My University had a stipulation that you were not allowed to submit previously published works for assignments. This applied to the arts as well as the sciences.
And the question was about work done while under the employ of the university.
Personally, I like the idea of working from a base of GPL'ed code. That way they can't do anything other than scorn you for creating code they can't distribute unless it is under GPL. It depends what you're doing. If you're doing some simple web forms or something, then using GPL'ed libraries is a good thing. If you're developing something which is meant to be distributed without the source code, then you're just sabotaging a project. (I know libraries are probably not the best example...)
Unfortunately it won't have the same bite if you wholly own the GPL'ed code because they could try to force you to grant them full license and ownership... effectively forking the code.
Re:No contract? (Score:3)
Does your school have an IP policy? (Score:3)
For example, at CMU the intellectual property policy [cmu.edu] seems to say that by default inventors own 50% of whatever they create. But this is only if the university decides to commercialize an idea. If the university declares itself to be uninterested (ie, the university doesn't want to take the risk of spinning off a business) then the inventor owns 85% of any proceeds after the first $25000 of profit.
Note that this applies to work that you do while sponsored by a research grant. For non-sponsored work (such as classwork), a student owns 100% of their work, and the university has no claim on it.
(Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, I am just talking about my non-professional interpretation of the rules.)
Re:Another possible solution. (Score:3)
Open source/GPL (two different things), in my eyes, does not mean "profitless". Yes, in the real world, that happens to be the way it works, but not necessarily so. I believe that perhaps old software models become obsolete in the face of OS/GPL software, but that doesn't mean that there's no business to be done with it...
That said, how come releasing the source effectively kills revenue for a program? Or, more directly, why hasn't anyone figured out how to make a profit off of something that you can see how it works? Is the way the software industry works akin to the idea of a secret recipie?
For example, nobody but The Coca-Cola Company knows how to make Coca-Cola. If they released the recipie for their universally popular soft drink, they could still make money selling it, as a distributor... however, they would become drastically less profitable and/or go out of business due to everyone ripping off the recipie at home. But why can't Coca-Cola still make money selling Coca-Cola then? Making chocolate milk isn't hard... but people still buy Yoo-Hoo. There are 5 billion shampoos out there that use the exact same active ingredient, yet there's a lot of money being made on shampoo...
Still, most people assume that releasing the source is the end of a project's ability to make money - aside from mercy donations. Even when that's clearly not the case with some programs, those situations are seen as exceptions to the rule. And, of course, the GPL means that you CAN'T make money from directly selling a program covered by it - so you'd have to be rather creative to make money writing GPL programs.
This is the big issue that I don't understand with the Slashdot crowd.
I understand why everyone likes the idea of Linux, and Open Source, and the GPL... they're very fresh, very innovative movements. But what I don't understand is how everyone got to this point without addressing some of the gaping holes in some of these ideas. On one hand, the general situation/idea is that no one's making money off of this... so then how do you expect it to really matter to anyone? Businesses don't trust hobby projects (no matter how good they are), the software industry would rather make tons of money like it has been with its "cathedral", and end-users want a glossy, appealing finished product. On the other hand, it's very possible for these concepts to succeed in business - so then why isn't there a lot of progress in that area? Don't you think that all of these movements would surely come to light in grand fashion and be embraced by the world if there were ways to get people motivated with more than anti-capitalism and personal glory?
I'll say this, at the risk of my karma:
* I don't have Linux installed. I had it once, but I never used it much. I personally found it awkward and counterproductive. Maybe that's because it was RedHat 6.0
* Open Source is a fine idea because it promotes code reuse, peer review, and shared programming research/discussion. Its biggest problem is that it hasn't done anything substantial, yet. Code reuse is still a touchy subject with issues in intellectual property, compatibility, and liability. There isn't a computer language that fits perfectly with Open Source and mass distribution yet - most languages are proprietary or obscure, and C/C++ is not the best way to communicate ideas with human beings (there's no standard/automatic system of commenting code to make up for this, either). Plus, anyone who wants to make money will not distribute source code to the world when it's not usually justifiable or practical. These things have to be worked out... writing code for a hobby OS, arguing on the web against the naysayers, and trying to convince your boss to hop on the bandwagon are all not productive ways of helping the movement. If there's anything we learned so far, it's that working together isn't as easy as it sounds.
* The GPL and the FSF are counterproductive at this point. The GPL, aside from all of the practical "negatives" of Open Source, is a house of cards. As a rational thinking person, the GPL is well written and comes from good intentions, but it stands useless if (or when) a judge decides that it cannot be upheld. It needs to be tested in court, but it's a little late for that now. Then, there's the problem that it's viral - it wants to infect everything that it touches. I'm not saying that it's a bad idea to apply the GPL all the time.. but sometimes it is, for some situations. Therefore we must all remember that it's a SPECIALTY solution for a license, and that applying software licenses isn't always an easy, cut-and-paste task - we need to promote more thinking and communication on this idea, not simply adapt situations to the GPL whenever possible. And finally - the FSF movement is a radical, extreme, revoltionary concept that should be taken with a grain of salt. It all comes from someone who is very brilliant, but also who has a different set of morals and values than most of us. If we accept his values and promote them to the world, we're turning him into God. I get the feeling that there aren't many people thinking about things like he is... and it's like a herd mentality at this point.
I just wanted to say all that because I disagree with the idea of the GPL as a "poison pill". (although it's funny here) There's a lot of good ideas and good people on Slashdot... there's a great potential for this crowd. I simply wish that people would stop getting caught up in the stupid shit and start pushing the limits of our intelligence. Then maybe we all won't have to worry about working 60 hour weeks and having no lives on the side...
No source means it's not science (Score:3)
I assume you're doing computer science.
My supervisor ("adviser" if you're American) always used to say that if there's no source code, it's not science.
It is that simple. You should not be allowed to publish any experimental results, be it benchmarks or what have you, without also releasing enough information for someone else to reproduce your results exactly. For anything nontrivial, that means releasing the source code. If you don't, the experiment is not reproducible, and if it's not reproducible, it's not science.
Yes, I feel strongly about this issue. :-)
BTW, the "nontrivial" disclaimer is important. If you're analysing an algorithm, while it would be courtesy to release a working implementation, pseudocode or enough English to allow a good programmer to reproduce it is of course sufficient. But, for example, I was at a conference some years ago where a guy from Microsoft Research presented a paper on removing priority inversion from Windows NT. Any experimental data from this research is not science without releasing the source to NT, because otherwise there is no way to peer review the data. After all, maybe their technique, when implemented, actually had the effect of avoiding another completely unrelated performance bug.
Do they pay for the work? (Score:3)
Do students get cash for writing this programs, or do they have to pay less for the school if they code for the school ?
I think everything written in schools, should either be public domain, or under some Open Content License.
Think BSD (Score:3)
If you're more interested in winning the right to use a free-software license than in which license to choose, you might do well to bring up the BSD license. It was a very early Free-Software license and has an excellent track record, with some of the most influential software out there released under the BSD license. It also has the big advantage, in terms of convincing University officials, that it has the backing of a major research University. "If Free Software is good enough for UC Berkeley it's good enough for us," is not a particularly logical argument, but it might be more effective in convincing University officials than abstract arguments about licensing fees and the like.
Tell those bastards they can shove... (Score:3)
Re:No contract? (Score:3)
Regarding the larger issue, as with many such discussions here, people don't seem to distinguish between what they think the law ought to be and what the law actually is. My advice to the questioner is to try to win whatever victories you can -- latitude to release software freely, a share in licensing revenue -- rather than trying to overturn the whole system next week.
And, to head off the inevitable response, I have no interest in anyone using "GPL" and "Rosa Parks" in the same sentence...
Sorry folks, but... (Score:4)
As a student you really don't have many rights to what you create using University resources. What constitutes use? The courts and universities tend to disagree. Some universities content that any use constitutes ownership, when in reality it is if the project couldn't have succeeded without the universities resources. This includes web servers, internet lines, dorm rooms, everything.
Also, to make matters worse, usually the university requires a full declaration of all intellectual property developed by you EVEN if the university doesn't own it. Software generally falls under the heading of copyrights, and each univesity has their own policy on dealing with that. I suspect that they are much more interested in CS depts' code than with thesis materials.
My suggestion to you is to talk to the Tech Transfer department for your university and ask them. They should be your friends, because if you piss them off they can make your life hell. Generally they want to see their students successful, so they will be willing to work with you.
-Moondog
Open Source / Open Science (Score:4)
I'm working on a project to promote "open source" in the academic field of Artificial Life [alife.org]. You can find our (preliminary) web site at http://open.alife.org [alife.org]. We also have a mailing list, open@alife.org, in which we discuss possibilities for introducing and promoting open source in academia.
An excerpt from our mission: "We all know that good science must be verifiable (or falsifiable or testable). Science in Artificial Life is mainly based on computational experiments that were executed to find the results for scientific publication. If the source code of these experiments are not available for the public, the experiments are not verifiable. Therefore, source code of the experiments should be made publicly available, and that's what the "Open ALife community" wants to achieve."
Currently, our main goal is to influence the peer-reviewing process of conference proceedings. If peer reviewers see a paper in which software has been used, the peer reviewer has to ask the author to include a reference to his source code along with his paper.
We have been thinking of using GPL for these publications but we're not sure whether the GPL offers us the things we need (for example - if someone uses your software in his own publication - does he have to refer to the GPL'ed software?)
Work for Hire (Score:4)
--
Works for hire: Title 17 Section 101 (Score:5)
Is that homework, is that other code, "prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment"?? (Homework certainly is not, or so Federal precedent says.) Is it "specially ordered or commissioned...in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire"? (Is there a specific agreement signed by both sides for each specific work?)
Note that patent law does not have this kind of definition with regard to "work for hire."
No, IBM has stretched things in this regard beyond what the law allows. So have the universities of "gherehmee" and "feydakin".
I think it would be an interesting exercise pour encourager les autres for a student to aggressively pursue copyright infringement action against such a university, to the full extent of the example provided by the BSA and by Scientology: ex parte orders and all that (show up with a Federal marshall and an 18-wheeler, confiscate every computer in the place for your own infringement-examination at your leisure in the place of your choosing...)
fwiw, I note that Carnegie Mellon's CS department has started doing the "right thing" for class projects, etc., which as it notes are properly considered works of joint authorship, both the students and the university being the authors.
A couple of issues here... (Score:5)
Personally as a tax payer I think it makes sense. It lowers my taxes and/or it provides an opportunity to delve into things that the money might not have otherwise been available for. (Assuming the U has $1mil, versus $1mil + $500k from fees)
There is a disagreement with this from an academic standpoint in that it does tend to push research towards directions which are marketable to commercial entities. Although the Universities still review research to decide if it is ethical, or a direction that should be gone. As one example, when I worked at the University I recall our Agronomy dept board rejecting a proposal from a seed company to research genetically altered corn which was resistant to certain herbicides. They went outside and did it anyway, and now have felt the wrath of the EU
Another issue... If you reject the notion that Universities should charge for their research, etc. because they are tax payer funded entities and thus their work belongs to the public.
If you take this stance, then really the only legitimate license is... no license, i.e. Public Domain.
The work belongs to the public, which means the public can do with it whatever they want.
By talking about the GPL you are taking a middle ground, saying that the public doesn't own the work, but the University also shouldn't be trying to recoup tax dollars by charging fees.
Work For Hire Straightforward yet fact-dependent (Score:5)
The question of ownership can be a no-brainer in typical employee fact patterns. In others, it can be tremendously difficult to determine, and highly fact-specific. The law is derived from the definition of work made for hire in 17 U.S.C. s. 101 [cornell.edu] and applicable related statutes.
The general rule is easy: If you write a program AS an employee, and writing the program is within the scope of your employment, then the work is a work made for hire, period. In such a case, the copyright immediately vests in the employer, and you have no rights whatsoever (under US law, anyway), unless you have independently contracted for them.
The big questions, of course, are whether you are an employee, in fact, as that term is understood in the Copyright context, and whether your programming was within the scope of your employment, in fact, as that term is understood in the Copyright context. This is where the rubber meets the road.
If not an employee, or the work was out-of-scope of employment, then the work is not a work made for hire unless: (1) the work falls within one of the enumerated classes of works set forth in the statute definition; and (2) the work was commissioned pursuant to a SIGNED writing saying it was a work-made for hire. If both of these two rules are satisfied, same result as above -- employer owned it from the outset, and you never had any rights.
Otherwise, you are the author and owner, and you own the copyright. HOWEVER, even if the copyright initially vests in you, you can, or might already have, assigned those rights away. This depends how your agreements with the University are drafted, and may depend upon specific policies.
Accordingly, the other side of this is that if you want to hire someone and get good rights to their code, you should have a writing reciting: (1) you own it; (2) its a work made for hire, and therefore vests with you; (3) anything that does not automatically vest with you, for whatever reason, will be assigned to you; and (4) employee will sign anything necessary to perfect your rights to ownership. There are stronger and weaker versions of this that may be appropriate, depending upon the circumstances.
Again, this isn't legal advice, which requires the application of general rules to specific facts, any one of which can absolutely reverse the result dictated by law. If you have any doubts, you should bring the question to a lawyer you have retained to analyze those facts for you.
Oxymoron... (Score:5)
I know someone in my college who paid off his loans because he got in on the VA Linux IPO - all because he co-wrote some GPL'ed utility program that got in the major distros... And I know he did it on his spare time, in college, and the university was NOT demanding any profits. That's how most college-based contributions arise... not from schoolwork, but from spare time. So while the issue is valid, it's mostly irrelevant.
Generally, if you have a good idea, do yourself a favor... don't submit it as a project to someone else (either for work or for school)... that's like trying to make a donation to a sperm clinic and instead they wind up keeping your balls...
Here's a question: (Score:5)
1)What happens if I release my thesis into the public domain under the GPL before I hand it in to my professor?
2)What if I am not paid to write my thesis? (If I am paid to write my thesis, may I charge on an hourly basis?
3)If my thesis is considered the University's work for hire, what will be the penalties imposed on me for speaking about my thesis in public? Is there a grace period during which I can legally speak about my thesis?
4)After I hand in my thesis, is it legal for me to think about my thesis, or must I stop thinking about it until I have legally purchased a copy?
But who do you work for... (Score:5)
This doesn't happen in the art departments! (Score:5)
If they did, they could kiss the faculty good-bye.
Maybe coders should consider their toils art and take a hike when threatened in this manner.
Re:Here's a question: (Score:5)
How you got paid, or even if you got paid, doesn't intrinsically matter. Your contract might well have you pay for your education yourself and still assign all rights to your intellectual property to the university.
There are, indeed, situations where you cannot talk about your thesis research in public (e.g., if your thesis research was done as part of a collaborative project with industry). You'd probably know about that before hand.
If you release your thesis into the public domain, or do anything else with it that wasn't allowed for in your contract, what happens depends. The university certainly has no obligation to accept anything as a dissertation, so they could just refuse it. But (perhaps more importantly), you might be legally liable for breach of contract and damages. For example, if your thesis research is on the clinical effectiveness of some new drug and you release it to the press ahead of time, this may cost lots of people lots of money.
Having said all that, I don't approve of many of these things. But the only way to deal with them is to be informed, address them ahead of time, and make your choices accordingly. Either you attend the famous XYZ U. and buckle under to their intellectual property policies, either you take the lucrative biomedical research job that gives you a good thesis but requires you to keep your mouth shut, or you decide to go elsewhere. It's your choice; find out ahead of time and don't be naive about it.
No contract? (Score:5)