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Discussion on: AMA with Heather Meeker, Open Source Licensing Expert (and Musician)

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Heather Meeker

You are right. Universities have come very slowly to understanding OSS or any kind of open knowledge. But it's worse than that, they don't really understand "soft IP." They tend to be very entrenched in a model that goes like this: professors or researchers on their payroll develop inventions, those are patented, and the university licenses them to the inventor (or others) for royalties. I have literally had a university OTL send me a patent license when we wanted to license software or data!

Also, when you are dealing with a university OTL, you are often dealing with a contract lawyer or paralegal who has no authority to negotiate standard patent licensing terms.

This is an education problem, and it's tough. The best you can usually do is get the ear of the head of OTL, who can make decisions, and try to convince them. BTW I think the University of California has some good policies about this. security.ucop.edu/resources/open-s...
You might encourage local universities to take a page from their careful consideration of the topic.

Thanks for the question!

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Dylan Roskams-Edris

Thanks a bundle for confirming my experience and the link to the UC resource! I had not encountered it before. Because CAN universities often end up following what the US does it is veeery useful to have this kind of example to point to.

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Heather Meeker

UC did a lot of forward thinking about it, partially in the hope of creating an example. I hope it works!