[Insight-users] Guidelines Set on Software Property Rights - New York Times

[Luis Ibanez]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/19/technology/19research.html

Guidelines Set on Software Property Rights

By STEVE LOHR
Published: December 19, 2005

To remove obstacles to joint research, four leading technology companies
and seven American universities have agreed on principles for making
software developed in collaborative projects freely available.

The legal wrangling over intellectual property rights in research
projects involving universities and companies, specialists say, can take
months, sometimes more than a year. This legal maneuvering, they say, is
not only slowing the pace of innovation, but is also prompting some
companies to seek university research partners in other countries, where
negotiations over intellectual property are less time-consuming.

"This a great start to addressing the problem," said Peter A. Freeman,
assistant director for computer and information science and engineering
at the National Science Foundation. "It's a recognition by both sides
that for precompetitive research, 'It's the science, stupid.' It's not
the intellectual property."

The companies involved in the agreement, which will be announced today,
are I.B.M., Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Cisco. The educational partners
are the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the Georgia Institute of
Technology and the universities of Stanford, California at Berkeley,
Carnegie Mellon, Illinois and Texas.

Concern about the issue of intellectual property restraints on
collaborative research has been growing among academic and
private-sector scientists. The new effort is a byproduct of a gathering
of university and industry researchers in Washington last August,
sponsored by I.B.M. and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in Kansas
City, Mo., which studies and finances innovation and entrepreneurial
activity.

The current problem, said Lesa Mitchell, a vice president at the
Kauffman Foundation, was partly an "unintended consequence" of policies
meant to encourage universities to make their research available for
commercial uses, thus stimulating innovation and economic growth.

The tone was set, Ms. Mitchell said, by the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which
allowed universities to hold the patents on federally funded research
and to license that intellectual property to industry.

Since then, universities, like many corporations, have sought to cash in
wherever possible on their intellectual property. The companies and
universities have agreed to make intellectual property developed in open
collaborations available free for commercial and academic use.

They have also agreed to a set of guidelines addressing the rights of
the participating companies and universities, and the public.

The guidelines and framework for the agreement will posted this week at
www.ibm.com/university, and at the Kauffman foundation's site,
www.kauffman.org.