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Who Owns Student-Created Intellectual Property?

By Brendan McKenna

When teens select a college, they have historically considered factors like the school's cost, academic programs, location and climate. Now it seems they should consider whether a school will claim an ownership right if the students create a new invention while attending the school. That's what happened to University of Missouri student Tony Brown, after he and three fellow students created NearBuy, an iPhone application intended to help track local apartment rentals. According to Yahoo News, the university initially demanded 25 percent ownership and two-thirds of the profits from the app, which has been downloaded more than 250,000 times. The university has since revised its policy to state that it will not claim an ownership interest in inventions created for school contests, by extracurricular clubs, or as the result of an individual's initiative. However, if a student invention was created under a professor's supervision or with the use of school resources or grant money, then the school can assert the same ownership right as it does for faculty inventions. Universities tend to have more established policies regarding inventions created by their professors; however, school policies related to student inventions may still be lagging behind social changes and the general pace...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on January 24, 2011 (boomark / email).