Re: Professors stealing graduate student research work?



On Wed, 6 Jul 2005, Sparky wrote:

Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2005 09:49:22 -0400
From: Sparky <Sparky@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Newsgroups: sci.research.careers
Subject: Re: Professors stealing graduate student research work?


"straydog" <aes1492@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Pine.NEB.4.62.0507060107110.18755@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx




1. Check for any rules or regulations at your institution (it may be in
the Grants and Contracts office OR maybe in the Technology Transfer
Office or, call up your institution's Office of the General Counsel, or
at least ask in the dean's/director's office who they have retained for
legal work. They are really obligated to tell you even over the telephone.
They may already have preemptive regulations that say that any IP
developed there belongs to them, whether it is disclosed or not.


This funding for this work came out of my pocket. 

see below...

2. Your "power" over the professor's self-declared confiscation (planned
but not yet executed) may be less than you think (I'm on your side by the
way, but I've seen these things go down in favor of 'rank hath its
priviledges' rather than 'justice' more often than not). What you should
focus on is NOT ownership but inventorship. The prof can manuever around
this by installing himself, functionally, as your supervisor (and he will
win defacto) and the question of YOU being the intellectual creator may
(love lawyers?) may default OUT of the legal wrangle. Sorry.


How in the hell can the school own what they did not create or fund?  This
guy was my advisor on paper only.

I've been through this myself. The institution will argue: i) you are _functionally_ being mentored by your prof, ii) you are using the institution's library (unless you can prove otherwise), space (unless you can prove otherwise), lab equipment (unless you can prove otherwise), other institutional resources (unless you can prove otherwise), etc. You may get, in the end, some _formula_ for ownership. You would also have to be able to show TOTAL indenpendence from your prof but even if the guy is your advisor on paper, that alone will LINK you to the institution.

I appreciate and sympathise with your situation, but you need to do all the checking up that I explained elsewhere (call those offices, find out what the institution's policy is on IP). I can recall back in the mid 1980s I was at the ARC and they went through, for many months, draft after draft on IP policy and this was going on at most other institutions (and in private companies, THEY own your ass, your brains, your soul, your spirit and YOU own nothing. Check it out.


4. Regarding publication (and copyright infringement), be careful. The
prof has emminent domain by default. But, you should check your
institution's rules, regulations, etc., to see if it already has some
rules hidden out of common sight (a common strategy to pull them out if
someone is planning to give them trouble and show you "we'll fry your ass
if you try anything"). You also can't go publish on your own without
consulting with your prof and getting his permission/concurence, either.


How can he have eminent domain when he neither originated nor funded the
work?

Only if you did virtually all of your work in, for example, your own garage. All depends on department policy, institutional policy. Yeah, its a ripoff but, yes, they can do that. All you have to do is find, somewhere, any kind of institutional statement like "X univeristy has an interest in all IP, inventions, patentable ideas developed in whole or in part with its resources" and you are up ***'s creek.

I am not a graduate assistant. 

Doesn't matter.

I paid the full-freight for my
education.



The only reason he is my advisor is because one must complete 
either a three-credit hour research project or a six-credit hour thesis in
order to graduate (those who choose the thesis option have to complete less
coursework).   I chose to pursue the three-credit research project option
because I was only punching a ticket, not preparing for a career in
academia.

It still, in effect, "proxies" whomever is signing off on the grade, credit, pass-fail into a kind of "dominion" over YOU. You need to check your officials THERE wherever you are to find out what little rights you may have. Some places will let the originators/authors/inventors keep a lot or maybe all of ownership. Most places, I think, will not. At best, if you are lucky, your name will go on the line of inventors/authors and you will get a piece of the royalties. No more. Remember: ownership, inventorship, royalty rights are all separate aspects of IP. Sometimes even authored works...you have to transfer ownership to the institution (eg. authored journal papers) and sometimes copyrights, too. You can still be author, but your employer or institution of affiliation MAY have rights that they can declare over your creations. Check it out. I'm just telling you to be prepared for some unpleasant shocks.




6. It is important to understand that "the system" will back itself up
and you, being the underling at the bottom, are the most vulnerable to
litigation.



I do not work for the insitution, nor did I sign a contract conveying rights
to anything that I produced during completion of the program; thus, they
have no legal right to my work, period, end of story!

You don't have to sign any contract if they have a policy written down someplace that "umbrellas" all intellectual creations. You can't even say "they never told me about this crap." You always have to ask. They are not obligated to tell you any more than the minimum.


7. Do a google on scientific misconduct, misappropriation of IP, and find
out how these things have turned out for other people. What i know is that
most of the time its a bad ending for all.


As I said earlier, I do not intend to work in academia.  I am a
self-employed computer scientist whose name already appears on several
patents.   I went back to school on a part-time basis in my forties for the
sole purpose of punching another ticket to get past those who are "paper
focused."  There is no way on God's green earth that I will allow this
confiscation to happen without a serious legal fight.  If I go down, I will
take my assigned advisor and the university with me.  I have played the IP
litigation game more than once and won, which has allowed me to set aside a
considerable legal war chest (i.e., I have spent >$100K to preserve my IP
rights).   As I said, someone has to put an end to this abusive/unethical
practice.

I'll wish you luck and its always possible that you will have a strong case to retain most if not all of your rights but I've heard about and read about too many cases where these nice ivory tower, poshy-lilly white, polished knobs, halo-over-the-heads, and glow in the dark ambience joints will sue some little guy to steal his work. Mark my word.

Please, do your homework and check the institutional policies, talk with your prof to see what he thinks he owns or does not own (keep that tape recorder going) and consider writing signed memos, keep documentation, etc. If there is a LOT of commercial potential and your institution has a very agressive team or department that will pounce on anything smelling like money, then you may be in for an unpleasant future.

One of my own experiences in IP (see my website essay on how to do consulting and get paid), I did work for two separate companies who, later after I separated from both, ended up suing each other. One already got a judgement for some $13 million, one has gone into bankruptcy, one has/is counter suing the other for $40 mil and all of this is not over and it began back in '97. Its very ugly and I'm glad I'm out of it.




















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