Are My Ideas Being Stolen? If So, What Then? 508
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."
Re:Don't worry (Score:4, Informative)
I don't mean to sound rude, but you probably won't do anything anyone would care to steal (aside from another student) while you're in school anyway.
It may not be fair to state this for a school career in general, but almost certainly as an undergrad your professors aren't going to be interested in any of your completed assignments.
What's the University's Policy (Score:4, Informative)
If the University's policy is that work done by students is the property of the university, they are not "stealing" your ideas. They are commercializing what you have assigned to them. Find out what they give you in return. Even if all you get is your name on a patent, it's a great resume builder (remember, whatever your agreement says, a prof. can't just steal your idea and claim it's his; a patent MUST list all of the inventors and only the inventors; if an inventor is intentionally omitted, or a non-inventor is intentionally added, the patent is VOID).
I don't represent you. This post is not legal advice.
Re:Only the paranoid survive (not) (Score:3, Informative)
How was it that Ghandi put it? First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win? I don't think it's any different in business. No matter how good your idea, they'll ignore it or tell you it's shit so you give up, leaving them wide open to come in and take it. No, sorry -- but as an artist I know exactly how jealously one should guard their work. You have to be a puffer-fish, as my teacher once said. Or put another way --
"Many giant corporations have no need of a patent system. They may obtain patents, but only as a defense against some little machine shop operator who might otherwise invent and patent something the public would demand and the big corporation would have to negotiate for, instead of just adding the item to its product line. Many large corporations would be glad to compete on size, nationwide service, high volume, strong finance, and prompt delivery. They can kill off smaller competitors on any of those bases, unless the small competitor has a patent on a product somebody wants to buy."
-- Howard Markey, Former P Chief Judge of the CAFC
(In Some Patent Problems --Philosophical, Philological,
and Procedural 80 F. R. D. 203, p. 210)
Read the fine print!! (Score:2, Informative)
Funny. I remember when I was in University (early 90's) I read some fine print in a student manual that plainly stated that the university had the right to patent your work. The notice wasn't hidden, but it was probably ignored by many people.
Re:Publish it. (Score:2, Informative)
Too late...already been done.
An Australian LAWYER...(who'd athunk it?)
has patented the wheel, a "circular transportation facilitation device"...:-)
Check it out or google:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1418165.stm
Re:Protecting yourself? (Score:3, Informative)
There are a few of us "real" scientists left, who do science for the sake of science and for the benefit of humanity -- not to get rich. Actually, I don't know of any scientists who are in it for the money, but I do environmental work and not in a medical field or something like that. Nominally, when a university wants to get a patent for someone under them, it is because the university as a whole has a greater resource pool and can hire a specialist patent lawyer whereas the individual would strain his income. The trade-off here is that the university gets a say in how the patent is used. However, the article in the summary shows that not all universities have such a good attitude about it.
The one time I have watched this process was when my co-workers were patenting something, our university had no interest in helping them patent the device because it was too specialist for them. Fortunately the university of the collaborators who were working with them was interested and did the work for the patent. In this case, the patent was mostly just to stop the big corporations from stealing the idea and the issue of the patent allowed the scientists to distribute the design with permission to people who weren't interested in making a profit (i.e., other scientists). There have been a few of the devices made, but no one has demanded any royalty payments. Of course, no one has tried to use the idea for a profit yet either (well, one big corporation has tried stealing the idea, but no one was interested in licensing it properly).
Re:Only the paranoid survive (not) (Score:2, Informative)
That's why after you have proven that good ideas come to you and find their expression through you effectively (collect lots of evidence of this to prove it to others along the way) then you should strike out on your own. It means risking a period of unemployment or self-employment. It means doing lots and lots of homework up front and setting aside your own hard earned cash. Then you try and woo some VC and go out on your own.
Find people you trust and believe in and who believe in you too. Then you will be able to do this.
Before you go do this. Remember: you are making a life decision based on an anonymous post on /. have you done all your homework? Are you sure?
Re:Only the paranoid survive (not) (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Only the paranoid survive (not) (Score:5, Informative)
It's worth adding that in the real world you don't keep your ideas. When you accept a job you are required to sign a piece of paper that assigns ALL your rights to your employer.
To put the IP rules of most universities in context: They ain't that bad. The prevalent rule (law) in place is the Bayh-Dole act that regulates patents/IP derived from projects receiving federal funds. And, since most university research labs are federally funded to some extent, it's generally the rule that applies.
In general, if you're a graduate student, researcher, or faculty working in a University research lab, you are expected to approach the University IP office if you think you have something patentable. They will review it, and if it's deemed to be valuable IP, they'll file the patent or other protection, and they will handle licensing the technology, etc. If the patent/IP ends up worth nothing, then the University eats that cost. Any profits from licensing/etc are divided among the stakeholders -- with the inventor, the inventor's department, and the university all getting substantial shares, as well as a share going back to the funding agency (or agencies). Everything I've read suggests that a similar arrangement exists for non-federally funded work (e.g. through private funds, or using University resources), though the "stakeholders" are different.
So, while the University may "take" your idea, they will do the legal work to patent it, enforce the patent, and license it. And the named inventors will get a cut, usually between 20 and 50% (depending on the number of stakeholders, and the arrangements that the University has with them).
From my discussions with people who did development work at research universities before the Bayh-Dole act, this current setup is a vast improvement. Before the B-D act, it was very hard to get University IP people to move on technology in its early stages (e.g. when it needs to be patented), so, for example, you often couldn't get them to patent drugs before they entered clinical trials. Of course, after a successful clinical trial (when the drug is worth $$$), it's too late for patent protection. And, the terms were far less favorable to the inventor than are currently seen with the B-D act (e.g. the University took all the $$ and gave you a nice "thank you" letter).
Re:Only the paranoid survive (not) (Score:3, Informative)
Reminds me of every writing class I've ever taught (Score:4, Informative)
Every student talks about their story ideas like they're some sort of brilliant trade secret. But over the course of the semester, two things always become obvious:
1) The story ideas they thought were worthy of stealing almost always sucked on an epic level.
2) Even if their ideas didn't suck, their writing skills are so mediocre that it's very unlikely they would be able to articulate said ideas into any publishable form anyway.
I've encountered hundreds of students who THOUGHT their ideas were worth a damn, but maybe only a dozen who may have been right.
Re:Only the paranoid survive (not) (Score:5, Informative)
Let me just confirm your suspicion from someone inside the game industry. Good ideas are a dime a dozen. Great ones go for about a buck fifty.
I listen to people (or read online) all the time who believe they have a million dollar game idea, and somehow have the notion that this idea alone is worth anything. True value is realized in building your game from concept to prototype to finished project, and the thousands of adjustments you have to make along the way. All the ideas in the world won't do you a bit of good if you don't have a talented team with the artistic vision and technical prowess to execute it.
Even in my day to day experience, I'll sometimes come up with a cool idea for a game I'm currently working on, and mention it to the lead designer. For some reason, I'm still surprised by how often the designer had the same idea, but hadn't gotten around to formally incorporating it into the design document yet.
This isn't to say there aren't a lot of people with great ideas, but people tend to overvalue them significantly. If you can actually turn that game idea into a playable prototype, the value increases by about a thousand-fold. See: Narbacular Drop / Portal.
Re:More info on Photosounder (Score:3, Informative)
Well, I've identified 3 main uses. First one is to create original sound effects from images. You can hear what sort of thing you can obtain with it by listening to the flash mp3 player in the upper right corner of the site. A second use is as an audio editor, to apply all sorts of effects to it, like suppressing certain sounds, stretching it, transposing, and, since the recent addition of an image exporting feature (which is available in the demo too), all the kinds of things you can do in Photoshop, that is, wrapping, blurring, contrast, precise isolation of sound features/instruments, or anything else that could be imagined...
A third type of use, which I consider the most interesting yet the most underrated, is the creation of sounds from images, using real sounds as a reference to learn how sounds look as images, and produce similar images to obtain similar sounds, and then improving upon that to get something truly unique, like your very own unique musical instruments. I'm currently in the process of creating a full drum kit entirely create this way, by "drawing" each of them from scratch, for demonstration purposes, which, when is done, I will distribute freely. I have already a video on YouTube demonstrating how to create a full drum beat this way, but the individual drum sounds created for this video are very basic and simple, much more sophisticated types of sounds can be created, which is the very reason I started this project in the first place, to be able to create music in a much freer and more flexible way. The basic idea is, if any sound can be represented as an image, then you could make images that represent any sound you want, be they familiar sounds or very novel sounds.
Re:Only the paranoid survive (not) (Score:2, Informative)