Researchers at the University of Cambridge are angry over a policy being mooted by administrators whereby the university would retain rights to all intellectual property produced there.
They say the policy will stifle entrepreneurship among the faculty and encourage its best and brightest - the ones who earn the largest sums in royalties and licensing fees - to leave to work at universities, mostly in the United States, where they can get a better deal.
The university insists that the new rules will bring Cambridge into line with other leading research institutions around the world and that faculty will continue to benefit by receiving hefty shares of any money earned from intellectual property they develop.
The policy, which was announced in July and can only be approved after several rounds of hearings and consultations, calls for rights to intellectual property developed under projects financed from Cambridge's own resources or through the general funding the university receives from the government to revert to the university. At present, those rights belong to staff members, although the university retains rights to property developed under grants for specific projects from industry, charities and British and European government bodies.
Faculty members do not go away empty-handed, however. They are entitled to 90 percent of the first £20,000 ($12,870) earned on anything they develop, with the university and the department where the work is done splitting the rest. The percentage decreases until each party receives one-third of any earnings over £100,000.
"This is nothing radical," David Secher, Cambridge's director of research services, said of the proposed change. "We were all a little surprised that it caused such heated debate."
Heated is exactly what it is. Ross Anderson, a researcher in security engineering who is a spokesman for the plan's opponents, described Secher as "a chap who is ambitious and wishes to build a bureaucratic empire" but knows little about science.
Secher, who in fact has worked in biotechnology, is equally frank about his opponents: "I think it's nonsense if they're saying we're grabbing this and keeping all the profits. Of all the top research institutions in this country, Cambridge is the most generous to academics. The idea that we're not incentivizing academics is clearly not the case."
Cambridge earns about £1 million a year from intellectual property. That is tiny in comparison to the tens of millions earned at a top American university like Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or an Ivy League school.
It is more the rule than the exception for universities worldwide to keep intellectual property rights; the reason Cambridge dons are so upset at the prospect of losing them is that little is done to encourage faculty to exploit research commercially through licensing arrangements or forming start-up companies. And should a professor, against the odds, be in a position to hit it big, Anderson said, most of it is taken away. "Once the sum of money is at all significant, the university keeps two-thirds," he said. "That is an ungenerous arrangement even by socialist standards. It is substantially less than American universities pay."
He added that the rights the university intends to keep for itself include copyrights on lecture notes that might be published in some form, as well as database rights. That would limit earnings on much of what Cambridge professors publish, including popular books, and it is something the plan's opponents find particularly galling.
Earnings from royalties and consulting are especially important, Anderson said, because Cambridge salaries are low by the standards of universities inside and outside Britain. A Cambridge lecturer may be paid only £30,000 a year, less than a London Underground driver makes.
John Buckley, a member of the management group of PA Consulting, said he did not expect a significant faculty exodus from Cambridge. The fact that academics are willing to work for meager salaries when they could make much more in industry shows that money is not a high priority.
"In general what these guys tend to enjoy most is the kudos of developing something new in their field," he said. "It's peer recognition and the challenge of what they're doing in science or technology that's of interest."
When it comes to hard cash, Buckley said, there needs to be "a good balance between understanding that these things will get developed on university time and rewarding people for getting their brains around new ideas and processes."
He added that many universities had been "overgenerous" in sharing intellectual property earnings with professors, noting that researchers in industry tend to receive smaller shares of the spoils. What is more important for universities, he said, is that they facilitate commercial development of ideas so that there are more spoils to share.
That brings more money into cash-strapped universities and lures better faculty and students.
"Consulting and commercial exploitation of patents is one way to keep intellectual juices flowing," Buckley said. "Universities recognize that they can make more money and also attract more students." American universities are more commercially minded than their European counterparts, Buckley said. Some British institutions, however, have adopted the American modus vivendi, notably Imperial College, a part of the University of London that specializes in science and technology and maintains close ties to business.
"Imperial has always been a very entrepreneurial place," said Tidu Maini, a member of Imperial's executive committee and the person who oversees commercial exploitation of research. "Our competition is across the water, places like MIT and Stanford. If you're at Imperial and you don't get engaged with industry or health care, people think you're very strange."
Imperial holds all rights to intellectual property developed there, but it splits earnings 50-50 with the researchers who develop it, including lab assistants and technicians, not just supervising professors. And Maini stressed that the college works for its share.
"If an idea looks very exciting, we sit down with the team developing it and we say, 'Look, guys, this belongs to Imperial, and we'll help you to develop it commercially,"' he said.
The college helps faculty to write business plans and file patent applications, "and then we go looking for money" from venture capitalists and foundations. In addition to those external sources, the college uses its own funds as seed money to help form companies to exploit patents and copyrights. Maini said the college was involved in 50 to 60 spinout companies, including two listed on the London Stock Exchange. Imperial starts off owning half of spinout companies, then, in contrast with Cambridge, it cuts its share to as little as 15 percent as the business grows.
One of the benefits of Imperial's system, Maini said, is that it takes account of the fact that scientists are better at science than business.
"Cambridge has this big issue on who owns patents, and they seem to be stuck on it," he said. "That doesn't allow the university to get engaged in a meaningful way in developing them. If you're a good scientist, chances are you don't know how to look after yourself commercially."
Conrad de Aenlle writes about business and investment from London.
