Category Archives: Policy

The Bozonet as a Green Cat

To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time, Without that monument of cat, –Wallace Stevens, A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts I have been playing around with Pearltrees, which is a way of representing bookmarks graphically [ha, not … Continue reading

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Closer to Which Heart?

Science has recently published an analysis of the Stanford v. Roche case.  AAAS came in as an amicus on the side of Stanford.   The account is useful for what it leaves out and for what it spins.   My comments aim … Continue reading

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Dealing with the Syndrome of Assumptions

There are some assumptions of university technology administration that are worth making visible.  These include: It is better to get an invention disclosure early than later It is better to use a patent monopoly than other approaches It is better … Continue reading

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The Right Stuff

I’m looking for recent stories in which a university technology licensing office “did the right thing” and released its interest in an invention even though it had reason to believe that the invention was not worthless.   I am especially interested … Continue reading

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Four Ways of Innovation

Innovation isn’t a simple topic.  As Benoît Godin has shown, for much of its existence “innovation” was a negative thing.  You didn’t want to be called an innovator, and that’s what you called folks who were loons and threats.  In … Continue reading

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IP Practice x University Opportunity

A while ago I wrote about the CANVIS approach to modes of university innovation practice. Even longer ago, I described the five main productive approaches to IP management–WASTE. We can now put these together to frame a matrix of activities … Continue reading

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It's all so very natural

Finding reasons for ownership of inventions is especially important for organizations. Organizations do not have impulses. Organizations are not passionate. Organizations are fictional persons, golems, creatures of legal incorporation. They may own, act, and carry liability, but they don’t think … Continue reading

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Five reasons why you may want to work with your university IP office

While I’m not taken with compulsory ownership IP systems for American universities, there are still really good reasons to work with a university IP office, and even to want a university to own your IP. It’s all about choice, capability, … Continue reading

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Ten ways to deal with a university compulsory IP ownership program

Most US universities have now moved to compulsory ownership IP policies. This is a huge mistake and is damaging American innovation and subverting the rationale for the federal government to promote university research. We will deal later with why compulsory … Continue reading

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It just doesn't get any better…

University technology transfer programs now routinely advocate for policies under which the university claims ownership of inventions made by faculty and staff, and sometimes students, visiting scholars, and volunteers.  These policies then hand control of these inventions to the university … Continue reading

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