From baliga@mecheng.mcgill.ca Mon May 15 21:34:16 2000 Date: Mon, 15 May 2000 21:22:05 -0400 From: B. Rabi Baliga To: Robert Sim Cc: adresearch@eng1.lan.mcgill.ca, apost@mecheng.mcgill.ca, rod@MINMET.Lan.McGill.CA, inmf@musica.mcgill.ca, Laurent Mydlarski Subject: [iso-8859-1] Update on Engineering IP Policy Work Group's Meeting with [iso-8859-1] Bélanger [ The following text is in the "iso-8859-1" character set. ] [ Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set. ] [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ] Dear Robert, Juan Vera, Alvin Post, and I had a 2 hr. meeting with V.P. P. Bélanger and General Counsel L. Thibault. The fourth member of our Work Group, David Plant, has started his sabbatical, and he is in Pittsburgh. This note is intended to provide you a short summary of our discussions with Bélanger and Thibault. 1. Bélanger started by telling us that only he has the authority to propose an IP Policy to the Board of Governors. He added that the Senate and its IP Policy committee (the Frankman committee) can only offer advise or recommendations to him (Bélanger), and he can decide what he wants to do with that. We found all this rather counter productive, to say the least, but we listened to him politely. 2. Then, Bélanger tried to concentrate on the OTT and related matters. At this stage, we reminded him that most professors in Engineering do not think much of the OTT in its current form, and that changes in its structure and resources are required. However, we reiterated that restructuring of the OTT is a matter that must be kept separate from the IP Policy. We also told him, again, that with regard to OTT, what bothered us with his IP Policy was that (i) it did not provide for adequate accountability of the OTT, and (ii) it gave OTT a monopoly position vis-a-vis commercialization of IP. This approach would most likely hurt, rather than help, successful commercialization. 3. After that, we discussed several issues. The Engineering Work Group did not negotiate anything, and we did not come to any agreement, etc. However, we did tell Bélanger that the following aspects of his IP proposal bothered us the most: (i) The inclusion of "teaching" and "or another academic institution" in the definition of "Field of Academic and Professional Expertise" made it unacceptably broad. We recommended that the unacceptable aspects be dropped (the latest Frankman document does that). (ii) With regard to Policy on Copyright of Works, we told him that there were serious concerns with respect to Section 3.3. In particular, "worldwide" and "at the University" make the first sentence self-contradictory. Anyway, "worldwide" was unacceptable. Also, many in Engineering feel that it does not prevent the University from putting material such as course notes, software, etc., on the Internet, without specific authorization from the author or originator. I now see that Frankman has recommended that Section 3.3 be dropped entirely, which, I believe, would be acceptable to us. (iii) The most contentious issue we thought is that of ownership. We told Bélanger that before commercialization, IP ownership should be 100% with the Inventor(s). On successful commercialization, IP ownership should become joint between the University and the Inventor(s). We did not agree with his argument that joint ownership during the process of commercialization would be impractical. We told him that any venture capitalist would like to have a happy and fully cooperative Inventor on the team. Also, the venture capitalist would not care about the number of people, etc., at the negotiating table as long as there was a good chance of making money. Indeed, we told him that usually, it is the involvement of the University and the OTT that is likely to turn off the venture capitalist, not the involvement of the Inventor. This ownership issue is a fundamental one ... (iv) The University and the Inventor(s) should both have the right to veto commercialization on ethical grounds, before the completion of the memorandum of understanding and the signing of contracts, etc. (v) We thought that "Learnware" and any software related to teaching, and all related revenues, should belong totally to the developer (Inventor(s)), not to the University. Such activities are undertaken by professors, T.A.s, etc., not necessarily as a part of their academic duties. These activities go beyond the call of duty. They may bring monetary benefits to the originator(s). The University will have numerous direct and indirect benefits (enhanced reputation, better student applicants, vigorous and productive learning environment, ...) from such activities. With our recommendation, such activities may not bring in direct revenues to the University in the short term, but they would ensure enormous indirect commercial benefits in the long term. (vi) We thought that the tone of the policy was generally counterproductive, and would discourage inventions. We thought that with appropriate changes it could be turned from a negative document into one that would encourage innovation and loyalty to McGill. The points and principles proposed by Malcolm Baines (Frankman has a copy) would provide an excellent basis for such a positive document. (vii) We also pointed out, again, that several definitions are circuitous, therefore flawed ("Author" refers to "Works", and "Works" refers to "Author"; etc.). The Engineering document had cleaned up these problems, but Bélanger had retained his circuitous definitions. These problems must be cleaned up. Unfortunately, I saw that the latest Frankman document fails to do this. The Engineering IP Policy Work Group greatly appreciates the involvement of McGill graduate students in this debate. Please feel free to distribute these notes to other student senators, and anyone else. Best wishes, B. Rabi Baliga