Some Modest Proposals on Academic Intellectual Property

Earlier this week I was sent a press release noting two proposals for an Academic Inventors Bill of Rights.  One comes from Dr. Renee Kaswan, a former academic researcher and the founder of IP Advocate, a non-profit trying to spread the word on how to navigate commercialization of academic research.  The other comes from Alan Bentley, Director of Commercialization at the Cleveland Clinic.  So the perspective behind these proposals is to push back against what is seen as an overly aggressive and/or mismanaged technology transfer process.

I’ve heard enough anecdotes to believe this perspective has merit, but I don’t want to have that debate here.  I’ll simply say that knowledge transfer, of which technology transfer is a major component, has many different tools and methods at hand to facilitate transfer.  Emphasis on any one particular tool to the diminishment of others seems to me to be bad policy.

I find both sets of proposals similar, and pretty reasonable.  They are as much a reminder of intellectual property rights as an assertion of those rights.  I do not expect widespread adoption by universities, but I think they present a good set of guidelines for academic researchers whose work could be patented as they approach employment with universities or academic research centers.