Foreword—“Your” Intellectual Property: Who Owns It?

Abstract

The article below is about ‘‘your’’ intellectual property. The article concentrates on new developments in the copyright and patent areas, particularly the broadening potential to patent business and accounting research results that were previously thought to qualify for copyright protection only. Because of the added protections offered by a patent, this issue is important for all academics actively involved in developing new ideas. I leave it to you to read the article and consider your individual research and teaching ideas in light of these new developments. Academe has a long tradition of open dissemination of ideas. However, exceptions to the ready dissemination of new ideas have long existed. Contracted research, including industry and government supported research, has often been limited as to dissemination and explicit considerations of the ownership of the resulting ideas. Individual researchers have often kept their new discoveries ‘‘secret’’ until they could develop them sufficiently to exploit them for academic and, sometimes, commercial purposes. At times efforts to control the dissemination of ideas within the academic community have created individual and institutional problems when confronting the general proposition that academic work is intended to serve the public through open dissemination. I will not pursue this topic further except to note that, in the past, universities have exercised more control over patentable ideas than copyrightable ideas, and that if the range of patent potential expands, those same restrictions may reach out to touch more accounting researchers and teachers. The article provides some examples where this appears to have already occurred. However, ignoring the patent-versus-copyright issues, I believe that ‘‘your’’ intellectual property will come under greater scrutiny by ‘‘your’’ university employer as it becomes more evident that ‘‘your’’ intellectual property has economic value. Most accounting faculty have historically cashed in on the economic value of their work primarily through promotions, salary increases, access to research grant support, and potential consulting opportunities. Except in the patent arena, universities have not generally sought to take payments on books, articles, and other copyrightable materials developed by faculty. In the case of academic articles, authors generally have received no revenue flow and thus the university has seen nothing of obvious concern. It is less obvious why books for commercial sale have generally avoided attention as well. The journals that publish faculty work have served us well in disseminating ideas and discoveries and contributing to institutions’ bases for assessing authors’ work quality and