[HotHotLava]

Do computer science grad students in the US commonly apply for patents on top of writing papers, etc.?

I'm just wondering where the patents in this pool are coming from, I assume the administrators are not going through the research papers and file new patents on the researchers' behalf?

[unishark]

> I'm just wondering where the patents in this pool are coming from, I assume the administrators are not going through the research papers and file new patents on the researchers' behalf?

Your assumption is correct in my experience. Despite the thread starter's somewhat unusual take, it's more of a system based on rewarding inventors with a cut of license fees to incentivize them to submit invention disclosures. Then the school's IP office determines if it wants to pursue a patent on the invention disclosure or not. And open source projects are often part of the grant itself, especially in fields like CS and statistics, so a professor could specifically choose to produce them.

On the other hand though, if a grad student's goal is to take their school project and sell it themselves somehow subsequently, the school might actually own the rights. So this might cause problems at some point with getting funding.

[dmurray]

The university tells them to apply for patents if they can, and provides some of the bureaucracy to make that process easier. In the same way that the university - who is their employer, after all - tells them to publish papers, TA classes, etc. Also, it looks good on your resume. A tenured professor may have the academic freedom to ignore these incentives, but a grad student or junior academic needs all the help they can get.