STUDENT-GENERATED INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: PERCEPTIONS OF OWNERSHIP BY FACULTY AND STUDENTS

An area of great interest within academia is the ownership of student-generated intellectual property (IP). Students involved in engineering capstone design projects, business plan courses and competitions, and research activities have immense potential to conceive and prototype product, process, system, and service concepts within the university classroom and laboratory environment. Faculty members serving as mentors and liaisons to corporate partners generally facilitate the innovation process in the context of their employment as university professionals. The research questions addressed in this paper focus on who actually owns the intellectual property generated in the many possible partnership scenarios that arise among the students, faculty, and outside entities associated with a particular project, as well as whether students and faculty have a working understanding and appreciation of IP ownership. Results from this survey suggest that students feel they own their classroom and laboratory ideas, and that they are somewhat reluctant to share this ownership with their faculty mentors. Student respondents consistently assigned more IP ownership to students compared to faculty, and ascribed less ownership to faculty compared to company management when a corporate entity was involved in a joint university-industry project. Implications of these findings and future research are discussed. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]