Category Archives: Agreements

Choose Your Open Source License

Posted on September 16, 2016 by Gerald Barnett

There’s a useful guide at GitHub for choosing an open source license. The guide presents a developer with three distinct options: These capture three common, primary concerns that show up once one has made the decision to be open with … Continue reading →

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What universities can and can’t do with their patents

Posted on July 18, 2016 by Gerald Barnett

We started an investigation into university IP practice with this question: Should university management of patents be any different from any other owner of patents? The answer we found is “yes.” University patents not only should be different–they clearly are … Continue reading →

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University Patent Practice: Share

Posted on July 16, 2016 by Gerald Barnett

Here are five ways to use a patent: Nonuse     Don’t practice the claimed invention and exclude all others Troll          Don’t practice, demand payment if others practice the claimed invention Flip           Don’t practice, and exclusively … Continue reading →

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University Patent Practice: Practice

Posted on July 15, 2016 by Gerald Barnett

Here are five ways to use a patent: Nonuse     Don’t practice the claimed invention and exclude all others Troll          Don’t practice, demand payment if others practice the claimed invention Flip           Don’t practice, and exclusively … Continue reading →

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University Patent Practice: Troll

Posted on July 13, 2016 by Gerald Barnett

Here are five ways to use a patent: Nonuse     Don’t practice the claimed invention and exclude all others Troll          Don’t practice, demand payment if others practice the claimed invention Flip           Don’t practice, and exclusively … Continue reading →

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Subject Patent Exhaustion

Posted on June 6, 2016 by Gerald Barnett

Caltech has just sued Apple for infringement of a patent. The patent in question, “Serial concatenation of interleaved convolutional codes forming turbo-like codes” (US Patent No. 7,116,710) includes this statement of government interest: GOVERNMENT LICENSE RIGHTS The U.S. Government has … Continue reading →

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Penn State’s Pscyhomagnotheric IP Policy

Posted on May 31, 2016 by Gerald Barnett

[I have restored some broken links–I will have to revisit to see how Penn State has dealt with its goofy policy drafting. 15 Nov 2022.] Four years ago, Penn State announced that it was adopting a new policy to allow industry … Continue reading →

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The path from Bayh-Dole to inventors

Posted on April 10, 2016 by Gerald Barnett

Bayh-Dole is a law of federal contracting for inventions. Let’s work through it, again. 1) Bayh-Dole applies to federal agencies, not to universities. When university administrators say that “Bayh-Dole requires universities to commercialize inventions made with federal funding,” they are twice wrong. First, … Continue reading →

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The Mindset That Promotes Servile Relationships

Posted on April 7, 2016 by Gerald Barnett

In my last article, I cited claims from an article that insists that faculty are employees, employees have a duty of fidelity to their employers, fidelity sounds like fiduciary, so faculty have a fiduciary duty to their universities and therefore … Continue reading →

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The Status of University Patent Policy

Posted on March 31, 2016 by Gerald Barnett

What is the status of a university patent policy? Or, put it another way, how does it come about that a university can force faculty and students to give up ownership of their personal property–patentable inventions–property that inventors own by … Continue reading →

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