Leveraging A Flexible Intellectual Property Policy To Bring Student Innovation To Market

An engineering school at a primarily undergraduate, public, regional university in the Midwest uses a liberal intellectual property policy in conjunction with hands-on design and build projects in multiple classes to enable students to reap the rewards of their product ideas. The university's intellectual property policy contains two interesting facets that pertain to student innovation. First, students own their ideas. If a student proposes an idea to work on in a course then the student owns the resulting intellectual property as long as the student does not use more resources than the typical project in the class. The other interesting part of the policy is the concept of the innovation committee. The innovation committee, consisting of faculty and administrators, reviews intellectual property submitted by faculty and students. Faculty are required to submit their patentable ideas but for students it is optional. If the committee decides the idea has commercial potential, then the student negotiates a financial agreement to move the product forward through the patent process to market. The innovation committee usually offers money to obtain a patent, create a more refined prototype or help in licensing the technology. In return the student inventors agree to pay the committee a percentage of profits or give the committee part ownership in the resulting company. Examples of several student projects that used the assistance of the innovation committee will be described in the paper.