Legal considerations: a primer
on intellectual property
for master’s students
AC297r: Capstone Project Research Course
April 18, 2017
Intellectual Property
What is it?
Examples:
Intellectual Property
IDEAS
PROCESSES
INVENTIONS
Copyright
Must be original
“fixed in a tangible medium of expression”
Literature, architectural or engineering drawings,
lectures and instructional materials, music, movies,
recording, software and databases, art and
sculpture.
70 years plus life of author
Copyright
Principles:
Fair use
Work for hire- who owns copyright?
How to copyright something?
©
Patent
• Is software patentable?
Patent
• 20 years exclusivity to prevent others from
importing, making, using or selling…
Invention must be :
USEFUL
NOVEL
NOT OBVIOUS
NOTA BENE: patent rights are forfeited in most countries if an invention is
disclosed to the public before a patent application has been filed.
Trademark
Examples?
Trademark
Valid as long as the trademark is being used….
® ™
http://trademark.harvard.edu/pages/trademark-notice
Harvard (and all Universities)
•
•
•
•
Academic Freedom
Advancing Knowledge
Scholarship
Research
In tension with sponsored funding?
What % of Harvard budget?
Harvard – and you and your rights!
• Harvard – Sponsored research and funding
–
–
–
–
Faculty
PhD students
Post-docs
Teaching Fellows
The University owns intellectual property that is generated
through research conducted with the use of its facilities and
resources. (Bayh-Dole Act of 1980)
BUT
• For undergraduate and master’s students
– Harvard has no claims to IP
Assuming your IP has some value…
How to monetize?
Options:
Consulting
Sale
Licensing
Start a company
Or not monetize? – i.e. open source
Licensing
• Why license?
Research only
Academic
Non-exclusive vs. exclusive
Start-up structures
– LLC Limited Liability Company
– Corporation
• Non-profit- 503C corporation
• S corp
– Partnership
– Proprietorship
Case studies
• TripAdvisor – Spring 2016- image classification
tool
Case studies
• Biogen- predictive model for Alzheimer’s
Case Studies
• BWH-MGH Center for Clinical Data Science
Software - annotation tool
Case Studies
• Moleskine
Data product – Influencer model
Recent Harvard data startups
• WhetLab – purchased by Twitter 2015
– Prof. Ryan Adams plus collaborators at other universities
• 4 patents plus copyrighted software
• Team
“Twitter is the platform for open communication on the internet and we believe
that Whetlab’s technology can have a great impact by accelerating Twitter’s
internal machine learning efforts.”
• Perceptive Automata - startup 2016
– Prof. David Cox
• Kyulux – license 2016
– Prof. Alan Asparu-Guzik
• Software licensing plus 3 researchers/team
“Kyulux licenses Harvard’s deep learning artificial intelligence platform for OLED
development”
Additional
• NDA- Non-disclosure agreements
– Who is responsible?
– Why?
– How can they be enforced?
• Non-compete agreements
– Why?
• Data-sharing agreements
– IRB: Institutional Review Board
– Security/privacy
Resources
• Harvard- i-lab
• IP attorney
• https://choosealicense.com (for understanding
opensource software use)
• Office of Technology Development –Harvard is its client
• Copyright and fair use guide- Harvard General
Counsel’s office
• https://www.seas.harvard.edu/administration/intellect
ual-property-qa
• Come see me: [email protected]