Interesting. "patents created by their researchers" so if it's a official school project then, and not someone doing it on their own? That would makes since. I don't get why schools need patents in the first place though.
If you sign an invention assignment agreement (IAA) with a university, it will own inventions that fall within the scope of the agreement. Universities typically require employees including faculty, staff, and graduate students to sign these agreements. Even if a university employee doesn't sign an IAA, the university might have "shop rights" or copyright ownership of developments made with university resources or within the scope of employment.
Undergraduate students generally are not employed by the university and are not required to sign IAAs, so they keep the rights to their own inventions. (Though there can be some tricky situations where significant university resources are used.)
Interesting. I thought people went to college to learn, not to work for the school.
Do they get paid to do this sort of stuff too? I know I heard of people working in like the library to help pay down their loans. Just never really thought of colleges owning IP. So just a bit of a surprise to me.
Universities are research centers, not just schools.
Undergraduate students get scholarships for doing research, grad students do research as part of their studies and professors are usually researchers as well.