Attorneys won’t help you figure things out without 1) a dispute and 2) getting paid.
There’s a point at which the law becomes whatever someone wanting to get their way is willing to argue for. Until then, it is really nothing. A marker for a future dispute to bring clarity, meaning, a pending decision for which attorneys may then be employed to hump up their best arguments. Later, the tailings of the work provide law profs with raw materials to evaluate what went wrong.
The challenge for IP practice is that while there are plenty of things legal about it, at its heart it is not directed by the law. Oh, it an be, just as IP can be directed by business or by auditors or by activists. But if one wants to get clear on the law piece, that’s tough without a dispute and the money to pay attorneys to figure out the best spin. And even then, there’s no promise the dispute will clarify anything.
One would think that innovation ought to have other drivers for a community. That introducing change is something imaginative, creative, even delightful, and yet it would appear that it’s really still primarily about money, guns, and lawyers.
I guess that’s a risk in asking universities to get involved. Choice: do we work from local vision and compelling opportunities to help communities, or do we emulate corporate accumulate-contract-litigate approaches?