Undergraduate Involvement in Intellectual Property Protection at Universities: Views from Technology Transfer Professionals*

Undergraduate students are increasingly engaged in developing products and technologies that are commercially viable outside of the university through their involvement in courses and experiential programs focused on product design and entrepreneurship. The involvement of undergraduates in intellectual property protection leads to interesting questions related to how best to align student interests with institutional policies and practices since most are not employed by their universities in the way that faculty and many graduate students are. This paper summarizes the results of a survey designed to examine trends in the level and nature of undergraduate involvement in creating intellectual property. It was administered to intellectual property professionals in technology transfer offices at 30 U.S. universities with strong emphases in engineering, science, and technology. Findings indicate that involvement in intellectual property protection among undergraduates is growing at over half of the institutions surveyed; there is a lack of consensus among institutions of how to manage IP generated by undergraduates; and that the resources technology transfer offices have to devote to communicating policy is critical to the manner in which policy is applied.