Plenty of institutions would like to churn out more software patents, but there doesn’t seem to be a real consensus on how to go about doing that. Should colleges separate technology projects from broader research-and-development programs or lump the two in together? Should professors run their own start-ups, or should seasoned entrepreneurs take over the reins? The answers are far from clear-cut.
That’s why a new working paper, titled “University Software Ownership: Technology Transfer or Business as Usual?,” might be of interest to any number of campus administrators. The paper — written by professors at Columbia University, Duke University, and the University of Texas at Austin, and published by the Social Science Research Network — hopes to act as a systematic study of campus software patenting.
The study argues that too many institutions have adopted a “one size fits all” approach to technology development. Software often follows a different route to commercial success than inventions in fields like life sciences, the authors write, so rigid approaches to research and development might result in a spate of weak IT patents. —Brock Read
