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Games Entertainment Your Rights Online

IP Rights For Games Made In School? 128

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.'"
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IP Rights For Games Made In School?

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  • by Gates82 ( 706573 ) on Saturday November 15, 2008 @03:06PM (#25772111)
    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?

    • If I create something, and I never agreed to give the content to a 3rd party...It's mine, mine, mine. If the university has some sort of policy in place that makes all submitted content permanent property of the university, then I should have gone to a different university.
    • 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.

      You have a distorted understanding of how the world works. When you pay for someone to do work you, you do *not* necessarily get the IP rights to that work. A notorious example is wedding photography -- you're paying for the photographer's time and a set of prints, but you do not have dup

      • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 15, 2008 @04:22PM (#25772525)

        When you pay for someone to do work you, you do *not* necessarily get the IP rights to that work. A notorious example is wedding photography -- you're paying for the photographer's time and a set of prints, but you do not have duplication rights. Those belong to the photographer, because it's considered an artistic work, just as if you hired a famous artist to paint a scene.

        You're correct, but the situation with the photographer is not analogous to the situation with a University.u When you hire a wedding photographer, the photographer creates the "IP" (the wedding photos). But in Gates82's post, when he "hires" a university, it is not the university creating the IP (a game in this topic, but could be most anything else), but him instead. There's nothing wrong with your post, but it doesn't contradict anything Gates82 wrote.

        However, Gates82 also believes that if he pays all of his own tuition and fees then whatever he produces should be his. However, at a public university, some portion of every student's costs are subsidized by the state, so the state might have some interest in anything he produces even if he pays his own way.

        - T

        • But in Gates82's post, when he "hires" a university, it is not the university creating the IP (a game in this topic, but could be most anything else), but him instead.

          Well, it's true it's not strictly analogous, but my overall point is that assignment of IP does not automatically go where you assume it might. In the case of the University, they're obviously providing something of value, since the students are doing it within that structure, and not outside of the school. The school is providing the hardwa

          • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

            by 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 devel
          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            except that my schools have always REQUIRED people to do their own original work. Therefore the work should remain mine. I believe the schools opinion is that they are "directing" the work, so the work you do is "work for hire" and assigned to them. They are directing the work you do.. you wouldn't have done it without their input as an assignment. Frankly, it's a corporate-style power grab to prevent students from benefiting when corporations "donate" large amounts of money to "help" students. In the

      • A lot of that is inertia. It isn't like the photos are worth a whole lot to the photographer as an artistic work, it just happens to be a lot more profitable for him to charge you for time and reproduction than it does to charge you for time and throw in the copyright.

    • by Artraze ( 600366 ) on Saturday November 15, 2008 @04:14PM (#25772487)

      > 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: (Score:2, Insightful)

        Exactly. In fact, to spite my college, I tend to release all papers to the public domain or a permissive license and then upload them to Archive.org or some such. I know for a fact that at my college (St. Petersburg College) all liberal arts students get to keep IP of their work. As a music major, this is very important to me. I feel that what you create at school is yours unless your college states explicitly otherwise in writing. It's not right to exploit students. Period.
      • This very much depends on the university. For the two (German) universities I'm most familiar with, Students have normal copyright in all work they create. They may, however, have only a shared copyright, depending on how much guidance and support they had from their supervisor/lecturer. The university reserves an unlimited license for scientific use of the work.

        Please note that public universities in Germany are either free or charge a nominal fee only (typically not more than EUR 1000/year).

      • 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.

        as a graduate of a fine arts program, i can tell you first hand that with liberal arts, this kinda stuff doesn't happen. the school does not own any part of what i have created. even if i made it during class time, using school materials, the end product is mine, and i can do what i want with it, sell it to anyone, whatever. i've even sold stuff at my school, where they take no additional commission or fees, even when i'm selling on school property.

        technology education should not be any different.

        perhaps

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mazarin5 ( 309432 )

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

      • The difference is, I think, that a lot of valuable software comes out of student's work, and this outfit wants to set a precedent that they own such work. It'll be interesting, however this works out.
        • by kandela ( 835710 )

          So, in summary: Science/technology is more valuable than art to cash hungry universities.

          This sucks. Why should science/technology students not benefit from our creativity in the same way as those in the humanities? It almost seems like a denial of the value of creative input in technological disciplines.

          • So, in summary: Science/technology is more valuable than art to cash hungry universities.

            This sucks. Why should science/technology students not benefit from our creativity in the same way as those in the humanities? It almost seems like a denial of the value of creative input in technological disciplines.

            Well, I'm only guessing as to their motivations. It could be that they simply wish to avoid any future legal liabilities, or something else entirely. It does sound like a land-grab to me, though.

            From a purely mercenary perspective, it's a lot easier to monetize a piece of useful software, or a new programming technique, that it is a student's work of art. And I agree: if the student does the work he or she should reap the benefits. As others have pointed out, depending upon the situation the school might

            • by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Sunday November 16, 2008 @12:04AM (#25774857)

              Well, reading the article can give a clue as to Digipen's arguments:

              However, Claude Comair begs to differ. Comair, who founded the privately owned DigiPen in 1988, is its president and one of its owners. He is also a co-founder of the Nintendo Software Technology Corp., a division of Nintendo of America.

              "Our policy, which has been our policy since day one and which is laid out in our student agreement, is very clear -- everything that is done within the school and presented as homework or as a product to be judged by a teacher ends up being the property of the school. IP, code, artwork, everything," says Comair.

              "And, as a matter of fact, in my opening speech, I tell students that if there is something dear to them, they should not present it as homework."

              That policy, Comair explains, isn't a casual one and, he feels, it has helped the school avoid many problems, especially misunderstandings between DigiPen and the games industry.

              "We are not here to compete with the games industry," he says. "We are not here for people to come and make a game in a less-expensive manner utilizing equipment and software that has student licenses."

              "Just as importantly, we are not equipped to properly firewall our projects in the sense that we really don't know legally speaking how many or which students created which games. We don't know whether they received input from other students who have not been credited."

              "These are just a few of the reasons why we have this policy," he adds, "but the bottom line is that DigiPen has never sold any of its students' games nor do we intend to. Nor have we made any exceptions for students who tried to convince us to do so. They have come to us with so many very creative arguments that I recently had to say to them 'Please don't come anymore. I have your best interests at heart and I want you to go find good jobs after you graduate. But I simply cannot make exceptions.'"

              I can understand how students attempting to monetize projects could create a lot of issues for the school. Essentially, the school would take on liability, because the games were created with their software, computers, and resources. They just can't open themselves up like that.

              That being said, it's pretty obvious that Digipen is pretty permissive about allowing a company to hire all students, and create a commercial version of a student project. This is exactly what happened with Portal, and it's been a fantastic boon (in terms of publicity) for Digipen. They'd be insane to come down on the wrong side of this issue, as it would negatively affect the employment prospects of its graduates, which would ultimately hurt them.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        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.
        • So let me get this right, they pay to go to school so said school can keep their copyright?

          It sounds like paying to go to work, no thanks.

    • 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.

      .
      It would be - let us say - unusual - if your tuition and fees were covering all your school's expenses.

      No less unusual if no part of that tuition was being subsidiz

      • last I checked those were tax exempt DONATIONS... to charity, not investments. If schools are accepting funding for student work, then first, I expect to be paid for my work, and second, I'd expect the university to pay income tax like a business and for those tax deductions to be taken away from business contributors.

        They are paying for me to learn stuff... If I happen to learn something new and novel nobody else has learned then that should be mine.

    • The state subsidizes roads -- do they have an ownership stake in everything that passes over those roads?

    • This is likely due to what happened with the originators of Portal. Valve picked up the students from Digi-Pen after seeing a primitive version of the game that the students made.
  • by Spazmania ( 174582 ) on Saturday November 15, 2008 @03:09PM (#25772135) Homepage

    Just a reminder: it's really hard to pre-sign over copyrights to something except by being an employee of the institution in question. If these guys didn't sign a paper explicitly transferring the copyrights to the specific game then the institution doesn't own them. It might have a contract compelling them to sign the rights over. The contract might even be enforceable. But it doesn't -currently- own the copyrights.

    • by LrdDimwit ( 1133419 ) on Saturday November 15, 2008 @03:32PM (#25772273)
      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: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Spazmania ( 174582 )

        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.

      • by u38cg ( 607297 )
        I was given a similar piece of paper on my first day at Uni. I refused point blank to sign it and after a great deal of humming and hawing I was told that they would get back to me. That was 9 years ago...still waiting.
    • Many arts colleges expressly give copyright over work produced in school back to students. The one place this is not the case is in collaborative work such as the game mentioned here. The concern, from the school's point of view, would come from a group of students that disagree about how they should split the take from profits. Thus, for most collaborative projects (both games and other things like films), the school asserts copyright as a custodian. Usually, though, there is recourse for a formal tran
    • by bwcbwc ( 601780 )

      Surely this is a problem that has already been addressed by CalTech, MIT and Stanford (among others). Each of those colleges has had dozens of student works that spun off into businesses.

  • If you want to keep your IP, don't go to a school that will take your IP. They'll drive away talent, and before long they'll be irrelevant.

    • So how exactly do you find out if you get to keep your IP if it's not in the policies? I'm certain this isn't something they want to advertise: "GammaGaming Collegiate; We'll Steal Your Ideas!"

      Sure. Don't go if they're going to take your ideas, simple and straightforward. Except it's impractical, and there are a number of ways either party can get around such a stupilation; the studant claiming IP, the school claiming financed development and use of resources.

      If anything, profit-sharing would be one of the

    • I don't think there are any schools that don't claim your IP.
      • by EvanED ( 569694 )

        Totally false. Penn State I'm pretty sure does not claim copyright on anything you do as an undergrad for instance (rather, the line is whether you're doing university-sponsored research, but I don't think this happens as undergrads much); my impression was that that's the norm, though maybe I'm mistaken. University of Wisconsin doesn't claim copyright on work you do even as a grad student (I'm pretty sure this even applies to things you do under the auspices of being a TA or RA, though I'm not positive), o

    • There is such a thing as a standard form contract [wikipedia.org]. If all relevant players in an industry have the same requirement, then they don't "drive away talent" because there's nowhere else to drive the talent to. For example, which record label with access to FM radio promotion and retail distribution doesn't "drive away talent" by requiring its recording artists to hand over copyright in their recordings? You might as well have written this:

      If you want to keep your IP, don't go to a school

    • by KDR_11k ( 778916 )

      Considering it's game development we're talking about, you can just as well ignore the schools since the degree isn't really interesting to your employer, they only care what skills you possess and the degree doesn't tell them anything about that. Since the degrees don't really make you more qualified than a self-taught person I don't think you even get better pay for having one. Better get a degree for a job where they actually care about degrees so you have a fallback career to go to once the game industr

    • I'm not worried. My ISP provides me with a dynamic one anyway. I'll just end up getting a new one.

  • not cool (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pdwestermann ( 687379 ) on Saturday November 15, 2008 @03:13PM (#25772167) Homepage
    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.
    • by k_187 ( 61692 )
      Kind of. I know its not uncommon for a school to own the patents arising from student research. I'd imagine that it really comes down to what the agreement was beforehand. If Digipen has changed their stance (or even just didn't sufficiently clarify it for students), then that's bad. If that's how it was going in, the students don't have anybody to blame.
      • Re:not cool (Score:4, Interesting)

        by darrenbjohnson ( 870900 ) on Saturday November 15, 2008 @03:59PM (#25772411)
        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.
        • by Wavicle ( 181176 )

          Something I've always been curious about... Before I got my degree in CS, I was studying Real Estate (California, specifically) and one of the things that was drilled into us is that "A contract must be accompanied with consideration to be legally binding" or something close to that.

          At the end of my CS career, my school required us to do a Senior Project in industry and in order to protect industry we had to give up all ownership we had in the project. This sort of set off alarm bells in my head because I w

          • by jrumney ( 197329 )
            Consideration does not have to be monetary, nor does it have to be of fair value compared with what you are giving up. But what they are giving you in return would have to be explicitly stated in the contract, probably an education in the case of any contract with a university.
    • by dosius ( 230542 )

      Prolly falls under work-for-hire.

      -uso.

    • most schools claim ALL IP... every home work assignment, every term paper, every drawing, lab result, etc. I think in reality they do that to cover their own butts... so that if a professor reuses it, or submits it for research they can't be sued... but if that was the case they'd write the agreement like Flickr where it's non-exclusive and they clearly want the product exclusive to them.

  • I'm sad to have to finally admit it, but no matter how you slice it, in today's world, might always makes right.

    You will always be outmuscled by a greedy bureaucracy, unless someone even bigger protects you.

  • It's easy (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Don't sign contracts like that.

  • Back in the '90s and before, most universities claimed IP rights only on work "done for hire" which included work done as an employee or a paid research or teaching assistant, or any work reasonably related to those duties but not work totally unrelated, not work by unpaid students, and not work that was pre-arranged for the rights to stay with the inventor.

    I don't know what it's like now.

  • by stormguard2099 ( 1177733 ) on Saturday November 15, 2008 @03:39PM (#25772295)

    Here's from the president and founder of DigiPen:

    "I am not saying that we will not change in the future," he adds. "But, in order to do that, we need to talk to the industry to see what they feel would be best. Our program advisory committee is made up of the best of the best companies in the world. So far," he says, "they are very happy with our policy."

    Yeah, I'm sure there's no bias on that board whatsoever!

  • by troll8901 ( 1397145 ) <troll8901@gmail.com> on Saturday November 15, 2008 @03:52PM (#25772367) Journal
    That's easy.
    1. Develop something at home with BSD License [wikipedia.org].
    2. Continue developing in school using the same license.
    3. Get the grades.
    4. Fork a copy for commercial (private) development.
    5. ???
    6. Profit!

    There goes my karma... and the schools will start agreeing with Steve Ballmer [wikipedia.org] too.

    • by Artraze ( 600366 ) on Saturday November 15, 2008 @04:22PM (#25772527)

      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!).

      • by pdbaby ( 609052 )
        I don't know that they care too much - I submitted all work (code+text) to my university under open source licenses for this purpose
      • ... 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). ...

        If the student re-develop the game from scratch for commercial sale, can copyright be circumvented?

        No wonder the successful Web pioneers drop out of school! <g>

      • by Mozk ( 844858 )

        I think what the parent is suggesting is that if the university claims that works produced using school resources (such as computers) are the school's property, then a student producing works at home would retain his rights to his works. But if the university is suggesting that the knowledge he's receiving is somehow owned by the university and applying it to a work is therefore using school resources, they're full of bullshit.

      • I'd agree, they will call that plagiarism. Even though the work is your own, it's not original for the specific assignment. I know that's how they view work when you re-take classes or take classes that repeat assignments.. they want you to do original work and not "clean up" a paper you wrote for another class.

      • by C0R1D4N ( 970153 )
        This sounds more to me like giving your soul to your wife, then when the Devil asks for it you say 'sure!" and get a free donut. Then when the devil demands your soul, he can't take it because you were already under contract with your wife.
  • by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Saturday November 15, 2008 @04:08PM (#25772457) Homepage

    The article fails to mention that Synaesthete [igf.com] won $2500 at the Independent Games Festival [igf.com] at the Game Developer's Conference in 2008. I wonder where the $2500 went? To the school? To the students? I guess it should go to the school since the school owns the game right? Or did they give it to the students because it is their game?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What typically happens is that the students receive the money, but the school keeps the original award/plaques. DigiPen then makes copies of the very nice trophies for the respective students.
  • by 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.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Being a digipen student myself, I have a unique perspective.

    EVERY digipen student is well aware of the school's copyright policies. This happens well BEFORE any development on school games begin. As such, we know FULL well that any game or assignment we turn in is the full copyright of digipen.

    HOWEVER, having discussed this at length with various professors (and heads of the game department), there are ways around this.

    1) Any game you develop completely outside of digipen is yours free and clear. Provid

    • except that under academic rules you are require do do your own work, not develop other's ideas. Therefore any assignment you do should legally fulfill proper assignment of copyright to YOU unless they try to take it away. Therefore you are not sharing any IP from anybody else, only resources, which you are paying steep tuition for. That doesn't really grant them enough of a claim to the IP of what you did. I don't think College fits the consideration requirements wages, benefits, vacation time, etc. tha

    • Even if the policy is fair to the students, which is debatable, what miffs me about this policy is that I like games. Developers don't make games for free, so they need some way to sell them. Copyright is the legal mechanism that allows people to make money off of video games. So this school is collecting a bunch of IP rights to a whole bunch of awesome games and then sitting on it with no intention of commercializing it. That means that the consumer is worse off in the long run and the purpose of copyr

  • by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday November 15, 2008 @04:44PM (#25772627) Homepage

    Unless you're an employee of the school, or use their equipment, you should own anything you do. Graduate students may be employees if they have an assistantship, but undergraduates usually are not.

    I had some minor difficulties with Stanford over a similar issue in the mid-1980s. I was a Stanford student, wasn't using any Stanford equipment, and wasn't a Stanford employee. There was some huffing and puffing from the Stanford side, but they knew they had an unwinnable case. It worked out fine for me in the end. Stanford later changed their policy [stanford.edu] in that area, and I was told years later by a faculty member that I was partly responsible for that. The new policy is in some ways worse and in some ways better; Stanford wants a cut, but they'll help market the technology, and if they don't, the inventor gets it back. This is often a win for students. Stanford has very close connections with the Silicon Valley venture community and a track record in licensing technology. Stanford owns a piece of Sun, Cisco, Yahoo, and Google under this deal.

    It's much worse if you're arguing over IP rights with some school that doesn't routinely do IP deals. The school administration is likely to be both overbearing and clueless.

    • I agree. However, when I was there they considered us employees. The person in this article was not very bright either, we were told to leave our good ideas at home so that the school would not own them. DigiPen also publishes some of the games to show off the talent of the students who go there.
  • Just recode it (Score:3, Insightful)

    by QuantumG ( 50515 ) * <qg@biodome.org> on Saturday November 15, 2008 @06:06PM (#25773001) Homepage Journal

    If it's a student project then you probably put, what, 2 days of effort into it? You're a geek with youth on your side, and you've probably written 100x as much code for your own amusement than you've written for a stupid assignment/competition.

    Just recode it. You'll do it better the second time, anyway, and copyright doesn't cover ideas, just implementations.

  • At the Australian University I work for, and I believe it is the same for all, the students retain the IP for any creative work they produce. This applies to both undergrad and postgrad students, but interestingly, does NOT apply to staff. However, a recent law suit saw an Academic sue the Univeristy he worked for over a patent realting to a drug he created. The court found in his favour stating that acedmics are empoyed to conduct research, and not to invent. From the judgment "...a duty to research does n
  • The institutions that I have attended and worked for clearly stated that the copyrights belong to the student. End of story.

    Yet the university may have the right to prevent publication on other grounds. Even though the aforementioned universities said that the students own the rights to their own work, they also claimed that worked created using their computing facilities could only be used for the advancement of the university's mission. Those policies aren't there to force students to forefit their rig

    • Why should the student need to prove this? It seems to me in this case that the burden of proof should be on the university that the student did use their resources in the generation of said software.

  • The Portal Example (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I'm a freshman at Digipen right now, and I see nothing wrong with the way they go about copyright. If you are using THEIR resources to make your game, then it feels fair that they hold the rights to your game. Not to mention, it keeps the students from getting sewed for trying to sell something that was made using software that was only licensed for educational use(which is the primary reason for this whole copyright thing that Digipen has).

    If you really want to market your game, do what the Portal kids did

    • by Wiseleo ( 15092 )

      Feels right?

      No.

      Feels coercive to me.

      Take the code made in academic software, recompile in production software. What's the big liability? You'll be buying that software anyway.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Having been a Digipen student I have to say that the school is very demanding and the game classes take a tremendous effort to complete. Too many students don't know how to pace themselves to keep their academic classes balanced with their game class. There is a lot of pressure from your teammates to make a great game. If you added to that the temptation of fame and fortune I have no doubt the academic program at the school would collapse. I'm sure this is a big reason behind this policy at the school.

    Not t

  • Given the primary reason of any Educational establishment is to help its students develop the skills required for industry and to help their entrance into industry (in whatever field) they are not doing their job correctly by not helping him. Also who said he used the provided resources to actually create the game, not just what he learned in lectures, class, lab... Often work is done in my free time on my own computers here (I'm a computer science student).

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