IP Rights For Games Made In School?

Gamasutra has a story questioning whether schools should be able to hold intellectual property rights on games created by students. The point out a recent incident in which a development team was unable to market a game they created, and another situation where a school overrode the creator's decision to withdraw the game from a contest. "What irks Aikman is that, after graduating, he and his team approached DigiPen, hoping it might change its policy and make an exception for the award-winning game, but the school wouldn't budge. 'They were dead set on not setting a precedent because, if they let us keep the IP, they were afraid other students would want the same. But I believe there's something wrong with the idea of DigiPen owning games it has no intention of doing anything with, while discouraging people like me who could really make use of our efforts and use it as a springboard to a career.'"

Schools - A distorted reality

[Gates82]

Schools play by their own rules regardless of how the world works. I view universities as a service I pay for. Therefore anything I create at a university (unless employed to work on) should inherently become my property. Even if I use school resources to create the item (I'm paying for those services). The one situation that may change this is if my education is being subsidized, such as at a state college. My feelings then is that the state should have a stake in ownership, not the university (they are not paying for it). And for other then military work the state should release the information into the public domain as it is paid for by tax dollars and should become the property of the people.

--
So who is hotter? Ali or Ali's Sister?

not cool

[pdwestermann]

isnt this the same as the school claiming to hold IP rights over all of the drawings I make in my art classes? i see no difference, but in that context it seems awfully ridiculous.

Re:reminder about copyrights

[LrdDimwit]

Where I went to college they had a policy which you agreed to by enrolling, taking classes, and accepting credit; which said that anything you submitted for a grade or did because it was an assignment for a class you were taking was the school's property. Full stop. So they have in effect got a contract: your agreement to abide by the college's rules and regulations. Sure, it's a contract of adhesion, and the courts interpret these in the light most favorable to the person forced to agree. But fighting to overturn a clause in a contract is always tricky, and there's a significant chance you could lose.

Re:hardly surprising

[thermian]

I'm currently a PhD student at a UK university and my uni has already said they will take any commercially expliotable IP from me as and when I make it - you didn't think intellectual property was created to help producers did you? This is despite the fact that they are being paid to have me there!

still, for me, if the uni doesn't take my IP then the government will, but that's less common

I made it a condition on accepting my Ph.D offer (a UK university also) that any software/algorithms I developed were mine, and mine alone to exploit/patent/copyright, and that I would release everything under either the GPL or a BSD license. They agreed, after all, a Ph.D. student is worth a lot in grant money.

I don't know why more students don't do this, after all, if they disagree and lose you, they lose your grant money too.

Now I've got three years worth of code to clean up and release, which is going to take a few months, when I have the time.

Re:not cool

[darrenbjohnson]

Schools typically own patents arising from student research because the research was funded by the school. Having recently discussed this topic at my university I was told by the school lawyer that for the school to own the IP of something you do as a student you would have to have used significant school resources in the development. A significant resource doesn't include the use of computers. So basically if you didn't get paid to do the project and you didn't use any funding from the school it is yours. I think these kids should talk to a lawyer. Even if it is clearly stated in the schools policy that they own all IP, I think it's on questionable grounds. Im paying them for a service and in no way am I employed by the university. The only way they could own it is if they have a signed contract stating that I will sign over all ownership/copyright and I do proceed to sign it over.

Meet with them privately and make a deal

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't want to set a precedent. Fine. Make them an offer, you buy the rights to your own game, perhaps for a nominal fee like a dollar, and then all parties involved sign non-disclosure agreements as to what the terms of the agreement were. They'd be smart to try to retain some equity in the game, might be a homerun, but still. IP law doesn't exist to stop the development of good idea, but to encourage them. Were they to actually go into court and argue the former, it's hard to see how they'd win.

Re:Schools - A distorted reality

[Artraze]

> Even if I use school resources to create the item (I'm paying for those services)

While I do agree with you, this point here is problematic. While you are paying for the resources, you are (almost certainly) paying for educationally licensed versions of those resources. In short, if you were to commercialize something that they could prove you created using such resources, you could be sued for breach of contract.

Further, you also neglect to consider private contributions to universities. These usually represent rather significant portions of the budget, and can exceed a billion dollars in the case of particularly prestigious schools. As a result, no school can be considered to be funded entirely by the students, meaning that the school's resources are not entirely payed for by students anyway.

That being said, unless you are being paid to be there, they almost certainly have no claim to any IP created by a student, regardless of whether it's on the student's or the "university's time" (as the latter is being paid for by the student). The only possible argument to the contrary is that the university views the potential IP produced by the a student as additional compensation for their educational services.

There are interesting questions here though, namely what exactly a student pays for as part of their education. Intriguingly, I would have to say that a student has more claim to work they do for class than that they do otherwise, as the former is obviously part of the services they are paying for. Any university assistance on the latter, however, could very well be regarded as additional, unrelated services (e.g. consulting a professor, using software, etc).

As a final note: I am unaware of any school even attempting to assert ownership of IP created by liberal arts students, such as creative writings or art portfolios, etc. There may well be some definitive precedent within that area.

Re:Permissive free software license

[Artraze]

A fun suggestion, but if a university does own the rights to your work, they could very simply disallow your contributions to be released under a given license (BSD in this case). You can't circumvent someone's ownership of something by transferring it to someone else. What you're suggesting here is the IP analogue of stealing something and claiming it's okay because you gave it to your friend (or the public; IP Robin Hood!).

Re:reminder about copyrights

[Spazmania]

If they say it *is* their property, they have nothing. That's not an enforceable contract.

If they say you agree to sign it over to them, that *may* be an enforceable contract.

Re:Schools - A distorted reality

[mazarin5]

Students hold the copyright for papers they write and the art they make, I don't understand how code is any different.

Re:Schools - A distorted reality

[TrancePhreak]

Part of the situation here is the game may have been made with hardware & software provided by the school. I went to this school also, one of the first things they tell you is to leave your good game ideas at home. The person in this article obviously didn't pay attention very well.

Re:Schools - A distorted reality

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are good points. However, I can provide a real-world situation which is essentially identical to your Valve example, but provides a counterpoint: Small Business Development Centers (or at least the two with which I've been acquainted). A startup business will lease space (potentially including equipment such as phones & computers) and services (including a shared administrative staff and often business development and management consulting) from the SBDC. During this time the startup may develop IP without the SBDC owning any part of it, although some startups might trade a percentage interest in lieu of direct payment.

As another poster noted, there is typically a condition of admission where the university has ownership of anything the student submits. I recall that being the case at mine, and I suspect it's common if not pervasive. And that would render this interesting discussion largely moot.

Oh, and thanks for a reasonable response to an AC.

- T

Re:hardly surprising

[thermian]

I developed software that scans DNA looking for componants of genes. Its one of the most accurate methods currently available which is nice, but since my thesis was just submitted this year, and we've only got out two papers, its not exactly well known yet.

Re-working the software into a releasable product is not easy.