Vox Prof Forum What are you hearing about intellectual property?	Forum Rules Become a member Contact an administrator Back to Topic list
Author: mitton	Sep 12, 2009 4:42 pm	Top | Reply
Overall from the entire experience I am most disturbed about the attempted grab for intellectual property. For my colleagues from around the US and Canada, they are most disturbed by this aspect. Will this reverberate as a lasting impression about OU in US academic circles? Even though it did not happen this time, everyone now knows OU wanted it at least once. Do any other Michigan, or US universities have ownership of the Faculty's scholarly/teaching product?
Author: yumibe	Sep 15, 2009 8:59 am	Top | Reply
I too am extremely disturbed by this. I have no idea how wide of an issue it is beyond Oakland. One thing worth noting, though, is that the administration is actually promoting this concept as a means of keeping the medical school profitable: http://www.oakland.edu/medicine "Building on a solid foundation of the nearly $25 million in gifts, revenue for the OUWBSM will come from tuition and fees, commercialization of intellectual property, partner contributions, extramural research and philanthropy." I find that language--the commercialization of intellectual property--sickening, particularly in our context as the commercialization was based upon stripping faculty of rights to their intellectual property. I suspect that this was one of the main issues as to why the administration insisted on removing the medical school faculty from the bargaining unit. I also suspect that this is an issue that won't be going away in future contract negotiations.
Author: mitton	Sep 15, 2009 3:40 pm	Top | Reply
For biomedical research, commercialization of intellectual property can be done well, resulting in the applications of basic science knowledge to new medical treatment or diagnosis. I would expect some of the licensing to benefit Oakland University, reward the Faculty member involved, and permit the Faculty member to have some control in how their discoveries are used if OU does not vigorously work on applying the benefits of the discovery. Many Universities and Gov't research bodies (NIH) have set up Translational Research Offices, since the 80's, to protect discoveries of their Faculty. The NIH for example, files patents of translational discoveries, sometimes to give them into the pubic domain to prevent them from becoming the sole property of a single for-profit company. They did that with all their human genome data for example. Or, they license the technology as required to make it available for public health benefits. They did that with the first PCR tests for HIV, for example. The NIH was not a manufacturer of FDA certified medical tests, but they could license the science quickly to companies that were, and the licensing fees then produced about 80% of the licensing income to the NIH throughout the 90's. Those funds pay the legal and patenting fees for the NIH and support research. A badly needed, sensitive, test became the standard quickly around the world. So you can manage property in both good and bad ways. The NIH agreements also allow them to pull a license and give it to anyone they want, if the initial licensee is not moving fast enough for the public good. The NIH and several University models take into account the staff contribution and and have it as documented policy. This includes formulas for the "inventing" staff's share of royalties. Most will have some level of yearly cap, NIH will be one of the lowest; the NIH does not have the role of making billionaires. Most of us would not be in Academia if we wanted to be rich. :) Everyone will have a different model, but all of the successful Technology Transfer Offices have models that involve the creators of the intellectual property.

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