U.S. Corporate R&D Crisis Can be Solved if Universities Relinquish IP Rights
RIT president calls on higher education to carry out low-cost research and development.
(Vocus/PRWEB ) November 19, 2007 -- Universities should relinquish intellectual property rights associated with sponsored research for corporations in order to put the U.S. back on the fast track with research and development, says Bill Destler, president of Rochester Institute of Technology.
Destler examines the issue in a new essay titled “A New Relationship Between Business and Academia.” Destler says America’s leadership in new product and service development is in jeopardy. “Our corporate competitors overseas have increased their research and development efforts to the point where many are now superior in quality and productivity to our own.”
But Destler says American graduate students are still the most cost-effective R&D labor force anywhere. He says many colleges and universities have laboratory assets that would be prohibitively expensive for most companies to reproduce.
Destler believes universities should make faculty and staff, graduate and undergraduate students, and facilities available to companies “to carry out corporate research and development projects at low cost and without the usual intellectual property fights that usually derail such efforts.”
Destler says universities could agree to accept a modest up-front payment in return for relinquishing all intellectual property rights associated with the work to the sponsoring company.
“Imagine a new relationship between business and academia in which hundreds of companies discover that they can once again afford to do new product research and development, while identifying future employees at the same time,” Destler continues.
Destler says both academia and the corporate sector are to blame for the U.S. being “inept” in ways “to exploit this obvious ‘unfair advantage’ over foreign competitors … It is time for U.S. colleges and universities to remember that they are tax-exempt, non-profit organizations whose primary role is to serve society, not to make money.”
A new work arrangement to re-energize America’s corporate research and development programs needs to be urgent, Destler says. “Our future economic prosperity may well depend on our success in exploiting one of our last competitive advantages – America’s institutions of higher education and the extraordinary research and development assets that they represent.”
Destler became RIT’s ninth president on July 1. He was formerly senior vice president for academic affairs and provost of the University of Maryland at College Park.
NOTE: To view Destler’s entire essay, “A New Relationship Between Business and Academia,” visit his Web site at: www.rit.edu/president, and go to the “papers and speeches” tab. You may also contact Bob Finnerty at bob.finnerty @ rit.edu, or call (585) 475-4733.
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