Editorial — Intellectual properties: Who owns what?

Abstract

Intellectual properties (IP) are abstract properties associated to creative work, inventions, or products of the mind of certain individuals or groups. Academic institutions are home to freely flowing IPs with the abundance of inventive and creative students and scientists. Unlike in industry where IPs are protected like gold and kept in a vault, university research laboratories have a more relaxed attitude towards novel ideas. IPs flow from mentor to student and vice versa without hesitation and the exchange is all part of a flourishing collaboration among scientists. The healthy interaction between the collaborators brings about novel ideas to float and acknowledging the true owners of these ideas may sometimes be ambiguous for some. Claiming ownership to IPs can sometimes resort to conflicts, especially if there are no principles that guide the decorum of people involved. Here, we lay down some working relationships between members of a research laboratory and discuss how ownership of IPs are managed.