Undergrad inventors prompt revamp of MU's IP rules
Two years ago, MU journalism student Tony Brown was “multitasking” in class; he was trying to find an apartment for the following semester while dutifully following his professor’s every word.
“It kind of dawned on me that there had to be an easier way to (find an apartment) than trolling through Craigslist and the Internet,” Brown said.
NearBuy, the winning app they developed, maps local real estate or apartment listings from online databases, and real estate agents can use it to manage their own listings.
“We’ve been approached by a lot of people who have said it’s a very marketable app,” Brown said.
The idea was so well received that Brown and his team had partnership offers for the app from multiple companies by last summer. The problem: The university’s intellectual property guidelines for undergraduates hadn’t been updated in decades.
“It just hadn’t been done before,” Brown said. “Most things that are produced on campus aren’t produced by undergraduates.”
RJI Technology Testing Center Manager Keith Politte said the university’s guidelines for undergraduate intellectual property rights were not completely clear. “The lawyers we kept pounding up against were kind of stuck,” he said.
In a video statement at the RJI Student Developer Showcase on May 5, Michael Nichols, the UM System’s vice president for research and economic development, explained new rules proposed for student intellectual property rights and said he hopes to have them finalized by the June meeting of the board of curators.
The university maintains substantial rights over intellectual property developed by employees of the university, but the rules for students are less clear. The proposed rules that Nichols described would allow students to keep their intellectual property if they do not use more campus resources than what is available to every student. The proposed rules would also define prize money to be distinct from compensation by the university. In an earlier RJI-sponsored student competition, prize money was applied to the winning students’ school loans rather than given to them directly, Politte said.
“Various departments on campus have recognized this and been responsive in addressing these concerns,” Politte said.
Although there have been other issues relating to intellectual property, Brown and his team were instrumental in catalyzing the university’s effort to update its guidelines, Politte said.
“Students want to create,” he said. “There’s a deep entrepreneurial pool we can tap more effectively.”
The university’s move is part of a broader culture shift toward commercializing intellectual property rather than just doing research for research’s sake, said Quinten Messbarger, vice president of the Missouri Innovation Center. Paying for the marketing and development necessary to turn a new technology into a viable product often requires staff and resources the university does not have, Messbager said. In such cases, the intellectual property should go back to the creator rather than sitting on the shelf.”
“Most of the frustration now is there’s a lot of intellectual property out there, but not enough is being done with it quickly enough,” Messbarger said.
The app has landed Zhuang a job with Google and Brown a gig with Columbia-based Newsy. He helps develop and market the news analysis company’s video apps for smart phones, and he just finished one for the new iPad.
“I’m excited to be working for a company that is serious about pushing the envelope for what we can do with mobile space,” Brown said.
But even with all the success and good job prospects in a booming industry, Brown said he is most proud of prompting the university to give more intellectual property rights to its students.
“I certainly enjoy the idea of leaving a legacy others can build upon,” he said.