Friday, October 29, 2010

Intellectual Property Royalties of Researchers

Universities typically have a policy that assigns all rights to new invention to the university and provides a certain percentage of the university's royalties from licensing those patents to the inventors. Sometimes the policies also provide a percentage of the royalties to the department or the specific research lab where the research was done.


There have been a lot of disputes all over the nation for decades now about royalties due to university faculty and graduate students.  Sometimes an institution will try to retroactively change policies in order to retain more of its income for the current year by not paying out royalties that are due. Sometimes a dispute arises because the faculty or graduate student was hired for research and not invention so they try to patent and license the invention themselves and avoid sharing the royalties with the university. Sometimes the employee or graduate student moves on, finishing their research or invention elsewhere and not crediting the university at all for previous research they did while being on the university's payroll. Sometimes the university will decline to pursue a certain invention and only after the inventor makes it profitable with another business partner the university will sue the inventor for its share.

These disputes are common and, regardless of who is the cheater or the victim in each one, they cost the nation in lost productivity. Sometimes a researcher or inventor is told by an attorney to cease working on something while the case is being fought. Sometimes the university will deny access to the laboratory during the dispute. 

Universities are supposed to be centers of study and it's disturbing to think of them as places that sometimes try to cheat their own faculty or students or be cheated by their own faculty or students. 

The university as an institution is a special place that fosters synergy among people who are studying, teaching, and advancing the state of many arts and sciences. Because of this special nature, and because an academic life is so different from corporate life, I think that whether a person is employed by the university to do research, or grade papers, or clean bathrooms, any invention made by a person while participating in a university can be said to have been at least partially inspired by the environment. Universities try purposefully to recruit bright students and they entice them with rewards. Therefore, when those bright students come to universities and make innovations there, even though the students may be paying for the privilege of attending the university, those students still owe a part of their innovation to the university environment. 

I think a reasonable arrangement would be for the university to pay the inventor a share of no less than 10% of the gross royalty payments it receives for licenses of that inventor's work.  Some universities pay as much as 25%, and that's great if they can afford it. I think that if the invention is made after the inventor leaves the university but it is made in the inventor's field of research while at the university, it likely owes some of its existence to learning or research that happened while the inventor was employed by the university, and therefore the university deserves a portion of the royalties.  I think that the percentage due to the university should decrease with time to reflect additional work that the inventor is doing while employed by someone else and the fact that the university itself has more time to make something out of what was left behind using other researchers.

A schedule of royalties to the inventor that increases each year after leaving the university may be fair. For example, the inventor receives 10% while employed at the university, 15% the first year after leaving the university, 25% the second year after leaving, 40% the third year after leaving, 60% the fifth year after leaving, 85% the sixth year after leaving, and 100% the seventh or any subsequent year after leaving the university.  Those royalty amounts would be fixed amounts based on the year the the invention was licensed. So a patent obtained during a year when the inventor would receive 40% royalties would continue to pay 40% royalties to the inventor for the life of the patent. 

If the inventor leaves the university to join another university, the inventor should either obtain a release from the university for any further work in the inventor's field, or the two universities can share equally in the university's share of the royalties, or an accelerated schedule of splitting royalties between universities can apply only while the inventor is still at the second university.

I think that, if the university declines to pursue a patent for an invention, and the inventor made a reasonable effort to convince the university committee of the merits of of the invention and its profitability, then the university forfeits all rights to royalties from any resulting patents that are pursued with outside assistance or with the inventor's own funds. The refusal must be in writing and either disclaim the merits or the feasibility of the invention. Universities should have an obligation to either honestly pursue patents or issue complete refusal letters in a timely manner in order to avoid impeding national progress. 

My thoughts may be applicable to corporations, but I don't expect that corporate rules would be the same. Corporations can demand non-compete agreements from their employees that universities shouldn't demand. Corporations are about profit whereas universities are about learning. 


Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Fixing the Stolen Valor Act

The Stolen Valor Act was found to be unconstitutional because  it suppressed a mere personal expression.  In my opinion the First Amendment protects political speech, not unethical speech, so the Stolen Valor Act was ok with me. But anyway:

I read today that South Carolina state representative Chip Limehouse, from Charleston, introduced legislation in his state that would fine politicians who lie about their military records while campaigning in South Carolina. The first offense would cost them $10,000 and the fines would increase for each subsequent offense.

I think this is a good proposal. Politicians who lie about their service are essentially defrauding the public using false advertising to elect a candidate that may not have been elected otherwise. 

The proposal isn't perfect: politicians could still exaggerate their significance or accomplishments. However, I think it is a good first step. 

The next step should be to extend that proposal to include appointments as well.  Politicians will not be able to say, "well I was appointed not elected so I didn't mislead anyone" because their false statements may have mislead the officials who appointed them. So any person holding public office in the state is liable to pay the fine if they are found to have lied about their military service. 

I think this should be adopted and generalized as a federal law to punish lies about federal service of any kind, and that states should individually enact their own similar laws to punish lies about state and municipal service of any kind. 

With this fix, individuals not in public office who lie about their military service for whatever personal benefit can continue to do so as long as they don't run for or are appointed to a public office. At that time they would have to come clean or they would be liable under the fixed law to pay the fine if they are discovered. So free speech would be protected and the people would be protected.


Monday, October 4, 2010

School Bullies

We must not allow bullies in schools because they detract from the school's mission. 

Bullies are kids; kids have parents. Parents are responsible for their kids' behavior in school. 

Schools need to notify parents after each incident of their child bullying another child in order to give them an opportunity to correct the problem themselves. 

After each incident the school needs to escalate its involvement with the parents.  The first warning needs to include a tip sheet for teaching their kids not to bully other kids, as well as the consequences for the child and the parents if the child continues to bully other kids. By the way, the warning and related information needs to be communicated from the school directly to the parent by phone and registered mail, NOT sent via the child as a take-home note. 

The school's involvement with the parents should focus on educating the child and the parents on bullying and how to prevent it. This may involve discovering and solving any issues that are present in the child's home that foster or contribute to the bullying behavior. 

If educating and helping doesn't work, then punishments for the child and parents should start with effort or time-based punishments and then escalate to monetary fines and expulsion.  Effort and time-based punishments are fair across all economic backgrounds. They hit busy parents the hardest which is good because it will make those parents rethink how they spend their time, and hopefully lead them to invest their time in their children until the problem is solved.

Suspension should not be used because it provides a sort of vacation for the child which may actually be received as a reward, encouraging future bad behavior, and when a child is suspended too often he or she may fall behind academically and that pressure can also foster bad behavior. 

Consequences for subsequent incidents should include:
1. the child writing an essay about why it is wrong to bully
2. the parents writing an essay about what techniques they are using at home to teach the child not to bully others
3. the child attending counseling about his or her behavior for some minimum number of sessions
4. the parents attending a course on parenting specifically geared towards teaching their child not to bully
5. additional duties for the child at school, such as supervised cleaning or gardening
6. additional duties for the parents at school, such as road guard, cleaning, or gardening.
7. monetary fines for the parents - small enough to be affordable, large enough to get them motivated to spend time with their kids on modifying their behavior. The fines should be payable to the state, not the school.  The fines should increase with every subsequent incident. If the parents say they can't afford the fines, allow a payment plan. Any outstanding amount from any grade level starting at kindergarten must be reported to the state and the state should add it to the parent's next tax bill. This arrangement must be part of the enrollment contract.  
8. expel the child from school.  If the principal believes that no amount of fines will deter the bullying behavior, the best thing to do is to expel the child. The parents can then pay for private school or try home-schooling. If the child is expelled with fines outstanding, the state should add those fines to the parent's next tax bill. 

The point is that the state is providing free education for all children. In order to make it work, children need to behave appropriately at school. Teachers already do a lot to teach children how to behave at school but various factors at home can greatly affect their behavior. Parents are ultimately responsible for their children's education and behavior at school. If the child is causing a problem for other children at school, then parents need to fix it. If they don't, the problem needs to become their problem. It's not fair to the other children to suffer a bully.