Faculty approves changes to intellectual property policy
Princeton NJ -- Members of the Princeton faculty voted to approve modifications and extensions to the University policy on intellectual property at their April 2 meeting.
The vote represents the culmination of an effort that began three years ago to bring the policy up-to-date with today's technology.
"The University was becoming increasingly aware that new-age media were giving rise to another kind of intellectual property that is likely to be created frequently by our faculty and was not readily categorized under either our existing copyright or patent policies," said Joseph Taylor, dean of the faculty.
The changes concern copyright policy for computer programs and guidelines for electronic courseware. After two faculty committees worked on revisions for two years, a third group, the ad hoc Committee on Intellectual Property, began meeting last fall to hammer out the policies. The group met with administrators and trustees over the course of the year to discuss the policy changes. All revisions were accepted by the administration and the trustees before being brought to the faculty.
One major change is that most computer programs not developed under sponsored research contracts will be owned and controlled by their author.
Under the University's patent policy, ownership and control is granted to the University in a variety of circumstances. Under the University's copyright policy, ownership and control is given in most cases to the authors. Since 1986, computer programs have been considered to fall under the patent policy, rather than the copyright policy.
"In the past two decades we have seen that computer programs are commonly used as a form of scholarly publication," the ad hoc committee noted in its report. "A computer scientist -- or a biologist, an economist or a musician -- designs a program to accomplish a given scientific or artistic task, and typically publishes both the research article and the software itself."
For this reason, the committee recommended that software be handled under the copyright policy rather than under the patent policy in certain cases.
When a computer program is developed under a sponsored research program, a license must be granted to the sponsor. The University will own and license the copyrights to such programs.
But unpatented computer programs not developed under research contracts will be treated like most other copyrightable works. These generally fall under the category of literary, artistic, scholarly or educational works.
The new policy on electronic courseware spells out issues to which the faculty should be sensitive when developing this new medium. For example, when substantial University resources -- above and beyond normal support for teaching and research -- are committed to the creation of such courseware, faculty members "should expect the University to assert its reasonable interests," the policy states.
The policy also addresses issues such as conflict of
commitment comparable to teaching at another educational
institution and use of the University's name in identifying
such courseware.
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