If You Are Responsible For Protecting And Licensing University Intellectual Property: Fill & Download for Free

Judging from the Waterloo home page I detect some bitterness on that point.Katherine A. Hoye (PhD candidate) at Waterloo did a thesis in 2006 comparing the various IP policies at Canadian Universities."Some universities require their researchers to share licensing revenues with the school when the researcher develops the IP independently. When the university requires revenue sharing, the researcher is usually expected to provide the universities with a certain percentage of the revenues after the direct costs of developing the IP are repaid. For example, at the University of Alberta, researchers who choose to commercialize inventions independently of the university are required to provide the university with one third of the net proceeds of the commercialization of the investment (University of Alberta, 1991). By contrast, at the University of Waterloo, inventors who choose to commercialize their inventions without the support of the university’s Technology Transfer and Licensing Office, are under no contractual obligation to share the proceeds of their activities with the university (University of Waterloo, 1997). ""Unlike many other universities, Waterloo's IP policy confers complete ownership upon inventors within the faculty. This permits the broadest range of technology transfer experiences. Furthermore, Waterloo’s intellectual property policy has often been linked to the relatively large number of spin-offs associated with this moderately-sized institution (Cross & Babensee, 1992, 1994)."The University of Toronto changed it's policy in 1990; I did not investigate whether it has been changed again more recently. The following statement would have been true in 2006 at time the thesis was prepared."If the university researcher (at U of T) chooses to develop the invention independently, the researcher is responsible for protecting and commercializing the innovation and providing 25% of the net revenue from these commercialization activities to the university. "You can read the whole thesis on line. It has sections which specifically compare UofT with Waterloo.http://etd.uwaterloo.ca/etd/kahoye2006.pdf

I’ve worked through scores of university IP policies. Here are some of the things that rankle:Inconsistent, ambiguous, even incomprehensible drafting. Many of these policies are pasted together with layers of copying from other policies without carefully checking definitions, requirements, claims, and relationship to other university policies and contracting. The impression is that by creating ambiguities, the administration has the freedom to interpret the policy most any way it wants. And of course, there’s often an appeals clause that escalates the interpretation higher in the administration—no faculty or students need bother having an opinion.Bombastic preambles that make absurd claims regarding the public interest, “protecting” the rights of inventors, the necessity of “commercialization,” and burying in abstractions about “benefits” the desire to make money any way possible by dealing in patent rights. Why not just write, “We take every invention we can from inventors in our mostly inept attempt to profit any way we can from patents, and we assert doing so is just what the public wants us to do”? Folks may not like the claim, but at least it would be there in the open to be discussed.Broad, incoherent definitions of “intellectual property” and “invention.” Invention is often defined to include non-inventions; inventions whether or not patentable; know-how, improvements, “advances,” software—pretty much anything an administrator wants to call an “invention.” All this is absurd for a patent policy that’s primary purpose is to establish when a university administration might have an interest in ownership. Basically, these policies claim ownership of “inventions” whether or not there is any ownership theory available.Broad, unconscionable scope to ownership claims. Many university policies claim ownership of inventions made by non-employees—volunteers, visitors, collaborators. A number of policies claim inventions regardless of employment or use of resources if the invention in any way “relates” to the “field of expertise” of the inventor. Claims this broad amount to a non-compete covenant and prevent faculty members from consulting, working on their own projects, or otherwise using their skills for anything other than supplying the university administration with grist for their patenting.Treatment of “employment” for faculty. Faculty members are appointed, not “employed” for purposes of their scholarship. They are assured by university policies of academic freedom and freedom of research and freedom to publish. For their research, university administrators do not assign work, do not supervise or approve work, do not restrict collaborations, and do not review publications. For all purposes, faculty are not employees of the university for their research unless they expressly agree to accept university control of their work. But patent policies ignore these policy freedoms granted to faculty. A patent is, fundamentally, a publication. When the university claims ownership of an invention and asserts the right to patent the invention, the university administration asserts the right to force faculty to publish under their own names in the patent literature—even while university-hired attorneys control the drafting of the claims. Makes nonsense of academic freedom—or greatly limits the “scope of employment” to only those situations in which faculty members expressly give up their rights to academic freedom, freedom of research, and freedom to publish.Assertion of “present assignments” in patent policy. A “present assignment” is the assignment in the present of future, not-yet-made inventions. It is distinguished from a promise to assign inventions in the future, when they are made. University administrators have adopted present assignments because a dissenting opinion in Stanford v Roche argued there should not be any great different between a present assignment (“I hereby assign future inventions”) and a promise to assign (“I promise to assign future inventions”). Administrators bungle this up into a claim that there is a difference, and that present assignments are stronger. But they bungle things up even further by placing the present assignment in policy, as if each faculty member (and even non-employees) makes the present assignment merely because the university asserts that the policy applies to them. They miss the basic idea that a present assignment takes the form of a written instrument signed by the inventor-to-be. They also miss the point that an assignment without meaningful specificity cannot possibly operate. Until there’s an invention and it has been determined to be within scope, even a present assignment cannot become effective, so present assignments change nothing, though they do give evidence of the bombastic happiness of university administrators.Conflation of patent and copyright matters. University administrators draft their policies with the idea that copyright is just another form of patent. If administrators call something an invention, then they claim ownership of all rights—patent, copyright, and who-knows-what—regardless of copyright policy statements intended to protect authors from administrative controls on publication. Law professors assist in the bombast by opining that faculty works are really “works made for hire” and so owned by the university outright but for the grace of administrators in assigning copyright back when they don’t want it. Of course, faculty for their scholarship are not working for hire. The university asserts no authorial control over their work unless the authors expressly give up that control. But no matter for patent policies, which claim copyright in software, say, because an administrator calls the implementation of an algorithm an “invention.” Nonsense, but it’s policy, even though it abrogates other policy.Misrepresentation of the Bayh-Dole Act and breach of its patent rights clause. Many university policies misrepresent Bayh-Dole and compliance with federal funding requirements. They claim that Bayh-Dole applies to universities; it applies to federal agencies and to patentable inventions. They claim Bayh-Dole allows them to “elect title” in inventions—that is, “take” title to inventions—made with federal support; not so—and the Supreme Court in Stanford v Roche was adamant about that. No matter, university administrators refuse to revise or clarify their policy claims. And university administrators claim that their policy on assignment replaces the standard patent rights clause requirement that they flow down to inventors responsibility for establishing the government’s rights in inventions—so administrators flat out refuse to comply with federal regulations regarding grants. It’s all designed to mislead faculty and the public, and to make it appear that federal law endorses their taking of inventions. And university administrators claim Bayh-Dole requires “commercialization”—it doesn’t; its standard is use with benefits available to the public on reasonable terms. No matter—university administrators claim Bayh-Dole endorses exclusive patent licenses for commercialization, even if doing so prevents the use of 99% of the inventions claimed by the university. Sucks. Finally, university policies routinely disregard the nonprofit requirements of the patent rights clause—they assign inventions without approval and without passing through the nonprofit patent rights clause; and they use income from licensing federally supported inventions in violation of the requirements of the patent rights clause.The utter ineffectual hopelessness of the practices held in place by these patent policies. University administrators claim everything and thereby prevent a robust public domain, prevent student and faculty inventors from having access to their inventions when they work outside the university or graduate, tie up licensing arrangements in institutional fussiness over governing law and indemnification and auditing, and generally f-up innovation dynamics. Which is a shame, because institutions can play a huge role in helping inventors and investigators and entrepreneurs and industry and practitioners make use of discoveries and inventions—but university patent policies generally work against providing such help and instead serve administrative power grabs. University licensing practice now appears to be 10x to 80x less effective than fifty years ago. All that’s needed is one big hit every 20 years—or one invention in 5,000. The rest can go rot—and mostly do.There’s more, but those are the lowlights. Compare with the University of Waterloo, whose patent policy asserts that the university won’t make an ownership claim on inventions. Refreshing! That’s where many US universities were fifty years ago. But times change and Moloch administration ever advances its control over creativity—even the bungling, ill-conceived control of university IP policies.

An entire mythological universe has been constructed around Uranium One. This fictional narrative bears such a tenuous connection with any objective reality that one gets the feeling the main discussion ought to be about the collective mental health and basic information literacy of various folks in the right-wing blogosphere, and not so much about uranium or the U mining industry or Hillary Clinton.Uranium One is a foreign (Russian, formerly Canadian) owned company that controls a single operational in-situ leaching operation for uranium at Christensen Ranch, Wyoming. The site has been in and out of production under a number of operators since initial exploration in the 1950s. During its existence, it has mostly been run by foreign mining interests (French, Canadian, Russian). Last year, the site recovered a meager 23 tons of uranium. The United States is not a major uranium producer in the world today because U as a mineral commodity has gotten too cheap. The US is a net importer of uranium from foreign sources and has been since about 1980. (FYI, until recently, the major imports came from Russia through the “Megatons to Megawatts” program.)Uranium One does not hold an export license with the USNRC, so it cannot sell or use uranium abroad! Including in Russia. It, along with a number of other parties to NRC Export License XSOU8798, can ship uranium concentrate to Canada explicitly for the process known as conversion, which turns the yellowcake concentrate into UF6. The license stipulates that the converted hexafluoride must be returned to the United States, where it will be enriched and used in domestic US nuclear power plant fuel. All that said, natural uranium has very little strategic value in terms of weapons production, and it is not a rare material. In order to be useful for weapons (or energy production), it must be converted, enriched, and / or irradiated in a nuclear reactor.When Rosatom acquired Uranium One, the NRC source material license was amended to reflect that and the NRC reviewed the amendment as a routine matter of regulation.“[T]he NRC staff has determined that the proposed indirect change of control over the referenced NRC licenses to Rosatom is acceptable, and that this change of control, as described in the submittals, is consistent with applicable provisions of law, regulations, and Orders issued by the Commission, subject to the conditions set forth below in Section III. As detailed in the SER issued in connection with this action, the NRC staff has further determined: (1) that because no physical changes to the ISR facilities, no changes in key licensee personnel, and no operational changes were proposed in the application, the licensees will remain qualified by reason of training and experience to use the source material or byproduct material, as applicable, in such a manner that will protect health, safety, and minimize danger to life or property, in accordance with 10 CFR 30.33(a)(3) and 10 CFR 40.32(b); (2) that the licensee’s equipment, facilities, and procedures will remain adequate to protect health, safety, and minimize danger to life or property, in accordance with 10 CFR 30.33(a)(2) and 10 CFR 40.32(c); (3) that the issuance of the license will not be inimical to the common defense and security or to the health and safety of the public, in accordance with 10 CFR 40.32(c); (4) that the application is for a purpose authorized by the Act; and (5) that the issuance of the proposed license amendment is in accordance with 10 CFR Part 51.”In response to the question about who knows where the uranium went, the NRC knows where the uranium went! Anyone who handles source material must have an NRC license. So the NRC tracks that uranium all the way from its point of production on a ranch in Wyoming, to an enrichment plant, to a nuclear fuel fabricator, to nuclear power plants where it is used, to spent fuel storage after it is used. The same holds true for any uranium produced in the USA. Its custodianship is licensed, monitored, and inspected by the NRC.As for Hillary Clinton’s purported ties with Uranium One: she didn’t play a noteworthy role in the multi-agency CFIUS review of the Rosatom sale; the donations from the Uranium One’s former owner to the Clinton Foundation didn’t occur while the company’s sale was on the horizon or being reviewed by CFIUS or while Clinton was in any position of authority relevant to the company; and the ONLY criterion for CFIUS’s potential rejection of the deal would have been a threat to national security (which it unanimously did not find). Is it possible to concoct a tale of corruption and bribery out of this particular constellation of facts? Sure, particularly if you have a conspiratorial, Trumpian mindset. But the burden of evidence to claim that there actually is corruption and bribery here is just absent. What’s even more ridiculous is to claim that Clinton sold Russia 20% of US uranium—a common meme that is so factually bankrupt as to call into question the proponents’ intellectual capacities.