A recent article in Inside Higher Ed discusses recent moves in Kansas by state universities to lay a broader claim to the intellectual property produced by faculty. Such moves are not surprising as faculty are increasingly producing work in collaboration with the private sector, work that is often quite profitable. If public universities receive less state support and are expected to provide these kinds of servies to industry, why shouldn’t they be compensated?

It’s a reasonable argument, but it is also a move that pushes us further away from the traditional intellectual function of academia and the social benefits of academic freedom. Or so the argument goes. Put simply, if the university were to own all my intellectual work (presumably even this blog), then I could not even publish this without first having permission from the college. Everything that I wrote would have to be reviewed by SUNY, which means they would probably have to send it out to other people in my field b/c they wouldn’t be able to understand most of it to begin with. Once those people said it was OK,then I could look for a publisher, who would have to meet with SUNY approval, then all the "royalties" would go to SUNY, unless I’d negotiated some alternate deal.

It all seems rather cumbersome and likely to cause more expense than profit. The thing is that corporations profit from owning and managing intellectual property because they only hire employees to  produce valuable (i.e. profitable) property. On the other hand, most academics in the humanities and social sciences produce intellectual property of little commerical value. Managing that property is hardly profitable, as any university press can attest.

Besides, the question of IP is not really that simple. If the model is a MicroSoft employee whose coding is wholly owned by the company, then that model would also indicate that if the same employee went home and blogged or wrote a science fiction novel or even a how-to guide regarding a piece of Microsoft software, those products would not be owned by MicroSoft…nor would MicroSoft be responible for them if they were libelous or infringed on copyright.

Like most academics, I’m a 9-month employee. And like many academics in the humanities, especially those who don’t work at research universities, I get the lion’s share of my research done during the summer, when I am not contracted by SUNY.

If SUNY would like to give me a 33% raise and make me a 12-month employee purely for the benefit of owning the rights to my research in new media rhetoric, well, it would be a difficult offer for me to refuse.

I’m waiting for my phone call.

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