Gray and the duty to invent

[This is not legal advice, but it is about a legal case: University of Western Australia v Gray.]

To get you into it, I’ll quote from the Australian Copyright Council’s thumbnail:

The University of Western Australia failed in a claim that intellectual property developed by an academic staff member was owned by the University and that the employee’s interest in a company commercializing the IP was held on trust for the university.

The court found that the assumption by the university that there was an implied term that it owned intellectual property was not well founded; the university was not authorised by its enabling Act to make regulations which purported to vest ownership of all intellectual property developed by its academic staff in the university....

UWA appealed the decision, but was knocked back.

Challenging the notion that there’s a duty to invent, this decision changes the IP landscape in regard to patents in Australian universities. In response, it appears that many universities are scrambling to get this genie back into the bottle.

You might see these university efforts manifested in new language in appointment letters, grant applications or other research documents. I’ll be suggesting some responses in future posts; but in any case, you need to contact your Union if this arises for you.

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

—Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005)

Hiatus

I’m back at it.

I can blame some of the time away on a crashed hard drive at work (even though I write this blog at home). In any case, it was pleasant to escape posting on a fortnightly basis.

I’m not going to promise a frequency for the future, but I do have a few topics planned.

They said, no church approves of

gay or lesbian marriage;

I said, mine does.

They asked, what church is that?

And I said,

the Church of the Dignity of all Men and Women.

There are, unfortunately, a few empty pews.

—Yllib Ybnad (b. 1948)