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Asked by anon-287656 on 13 Mar 2021.
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Zahra Rattray answered on 13 Mar 2021:
That is a very good question. These days universities hold ownership on any discoveries for the potential money that might be generated from them. If you are the first to discover something new, you have a few options. You can file something called a patent, which says you were first to discover it or you can write a paper on it. The problem with papers is, that someone else might see it before it is published and claim they discovered it too. Most of the time people are honest, so these don’t happen.
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Philip Camp answered on 13 Mar 2021:
If it’s an academic discovery, with no immediate commercial impact, then publishing a paper is vital for ‘owning’ the discovery. It can get complex when people are working in a community, and there are egos at play, but generally people behave ethically. It hasn’t always been so, as your question indicates!
If it’s a commercially applicable discovery, the university can exploit the ‘intellectual property’ fully, as Zahra says, by filing patents, licensing technology out to companies, or forming a new spin-out company.
If it’s a commercial discovery made with support from a company, then the IP is shared between the university and the company, and agreements are put in place before the research even begins.
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Jesko Koehnke answered on 13 Mar 2021:
Unfortunately it is always your employer. You get a cut though, the size of which depends on your contract.
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Atia Azad answered on 14 Mar 2021:
This is an excellent question. When we do a science project, there are several people working together.
1. The PhD student carries out the experiments.
2. The supervisor has years of experience and can answer the PhD student’s questions.
3. The instrument scientist helps set up the equipment.
4. The funding organisation provides money for the experiments.All of them own different parts of the project and are given credit when you publish your results. Sometimes credit goes to the wrong people and it’s a case of standing up for yourself if someone is trying to take your findings!
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Phil Thorne answered on 15 Mar 2021:
Your employer owns the discovery (intellectual property) unless there is something in your contract. As it is your discovery then you will be credited on patents and papers. If they do not credit you on the patent it could invalidate it.
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Martin McCoustra answered on 15 Mar 2021:
It depends on whether or not there is a patentable product. For a pure science discovery my students and I would get the credit. If, however, that discovered could make money, the university that I work for would get some of the financial return.
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Andrew Parrott answered on 23 Mar 2021:
Already some very good answers. My only extra comment is to say sometimes a company may choose not to patent because it costs an awful lot to keep a patent going, and to try and defend it (e.g. it’s actually quite hard to stop people copying you without going to court). So they choose to keep it secret. I have done several projects where you sign non-disclosure agreement at the start, so you can only tell anybody about the discovery with permission from the company (they are paying for the research at the end of the day so it’s their call).
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