Faculty Inventions

Faculty researchers, particularly in scientific, engineering, and medical programs, often produce scientific discoveries and invent products or processes that have potential commercial value. Many institutions have invested heavily in the administrative infrastructure to develop and exploit these discoveries, and they expect to prosper both by an increased level of research support and exploitation of faculty inventions in order to determine which would provide the appropriate level of flexibility.

In a recent study of faculty rights, Patricia Chew has suggested a fourfold classification of institutional policies. A supramaximalist institution stakes out the broadest claim possible, asserting ownership not only of all intellectual property produced by faculty in the course of their employment while using university resources, but also for any inventions is employed. Of course, what constitutes significant use of resources is a matter of institutional judgment.

As Chew notes, in these policies “faculty rights, including the sharing of royalties, are the result of university benevolence and generosity. [However, this] presumption is contrary to the common law, which provides that faculty own their inventions.” Others have pointed to this anomaly and, indeed, to the uncertain legal and historical basis most major institutions behave in the ways that maximize university ownership and profit participation.

But there is a fourth way, one that seems to be free from these particular issues. Faculty-oriented institutions assume that researchers own their own intellectual products and the rights to exploit them commercially, except in the development of public health inventions or if there is previously specified “substantial effectively reversed, with the university benefiting in far fewer circumstances.