[Jhsto]

Had a similar experience with Oxbridge this year. They admitted me to a PhD program and asked me to pay the fees (which I was fine with, I had my own funding source), but they also wanted 50-100% of the IPR. Whether it is 50% or 100% depends on their consideration whether they see that the funding source has contributed to the creation of the IP. If not, Oxbridge owns the IP, and you are given rights to license your own work from the university.

Some are saying to me it is not as bad as it sounds, and that I should go because Oxbridge leads to a better life. But some agree with me on the fact that it creates very bad incentives for good research. I also asked some current PhD students what they think about it, and they told me they never even thought about who owns their work. I checked some other universities which declared that any IPR is always owned by the student, not the university. But, most seem to declare that the work is owned at least in part by the funding source, which seems fair to me.

A one commentor was very strong in their opinion that most universities and especially the UK are currently committing an intellectual suicide with how they treat their researchers.

[marcus_holmes]

A friend of mine was refused permission to use their own research in their startup. It wasn't even about the amount of the licence fee, it was a straightforward "if you start a business, you'll be doing less research for us. Let someone else licence your research and start the business, and you carry on doing more research".

Luckily they managed to avoid the specific IP in the papers that the university owned, and start the startup anyway. It has gone on to be a successful business.

Obviously, the university lost out in every conceivable way from this scenario. Literally any other course of action would have given them a better result. Play stupid games, etc.

edit: this was Australia btw

[ganzuul]

Are they aware that we don't do slavery anymore? Because that sounded a lot like indentured servitude.

[anoncake]

Because people are inclined to do research for a university with that kind of policy? Quite optimistic.

[caddemon]

It's surprisingly common for PhD programs to restrict outside activities, although that's probably field dependent. Not the same as the OPs story but I know multiple neuroscience programs where if you are receiving any funding from the University you are barred from working other jobs. There were always a couple students that snuck around and bartended on the side anyway, but it was crazy to me they had to actively hide this from the school - and not even just their PIs but also random program admins. I never understood why programs think they should be able to control students outside of working hours, but it doesn't stop most people. One of these programs gets over 500 applications a year for ~20 spots.

[srswtf123]

> I never understood why programs think they should be able to control students outside of working hours

They think this for the same reasons all employers think this; employment is a watered down form of ownership.

Advancement up the social hierarchy allows one to abuse the people below them. As near as I can tell from my own experience: money and control are the things you receive as rewards.

[jhbadger]

Because when you are a grad student there really aren't "working hours". Your project is supposed what you are devoting all of your effort to. In part this is due to your advisor wanting results and papers, but these also help you.

[caddemon]

Maybe this helps students in the direct sense of modern academic career advancement, but I think it makes grad school a much more negative experience than it needs to be, and more broadly is a detriment to academic culture. I've encountered students that were forbidden from taking even a single class after they met (the very light) degree requirements, students who were not allowed to TA or volunteer mentor, students who had to sneak around just to finish analysis for a project they did with their previous lab, etc. This structure kills creativity and collaboration, and it results in a lot of graduates that have bare minimum teaching experience and no idea how to advise. Shocker that we've ended up with so many PIs that are really shitty managers!

A top neuro program in a major city will pay ~40K per year (and this is high relative to many other sciences). The rest of the compensation is health insurance and a meaningless "tuition" credit in order to register for a full "courseload" of research. Even at 40 hours per week that is shit compensation relative to what most of the students could be making elsewhere. The thesis project takes place over ~5 years, which is more than enough time to produce very good output on normal working hours. If students want to make their project their whole life fine, but as it stands there is way too much pressure coming from the top to do so, with minimal real benefits actually reaching the students.

[alienthrowaway]

> It's surprisingly common for PhD programs to restrict outside activities, although that's probably field dependent.

It's also supervisor-dependent! After I was formally accepted into a post-grad program, I was talking to my supervisor, my then-recent engagement slipped into the conversation and h - a senior bachelor and resident grump - did not approve of me getting married. He thought it would be distraction; I very much doubt that it was departmental policy, but my future research hinged on his whims.

[hlandau]

Interestingly the fallout of this practice isn't just academic. Colin Percival, who is the author of Tarsnap and who sometimes posts here, is also the author of bsdiff, an efficient binary delta patching algorithm. His website notes he implemented a superior version of this algorithm for his 2006 Oxford PhD thesis. I seem to recall him mentioning years ago that the IP for this superior version belonged to Oxford, and how he hoped they would at some point give him permission to release the code for it. As far as I'm aware nothing has been heard since, though maybe I missed something.

[cperciva]

They eventually did give me permission, but I never got around to cleaning up the code for release.

[angrais]

Have you perhaps written a paper or article that highlights the differences? I'd like to learn more and don't know much about diff algorithms.

Also, am sure myself and others would be interested to see your current/old code.

[cperciva]

The second chapter of my thesis describes the version of bsdiff I wrote as part of my doctorate.

[austinjp]

In my reading [0,1] Cambridge is more lenient than Oxford about intellectual property. I've heard that Cambridge is one of the more lenient universities in the UK regarding IP, although I don't have experience or data to back that up.

Your university will (should!) provide talks or contact with their IP department, spin-out office, etc. You should be able to ask pertinent questions of them in confidence. Make a contact there, and ask for an off-the-record conversation, they should be amenable.

In my limited experience, universities are averse to some monetisation approaches that are frequently used in computing businesses, for example open-sourcing the code and monetising a service that deploys/supports it. (I'm aware of difficulties with this model, just using it as an example.) Instead, they are far more familiar with approaches such as patenting a new algorithm and selling enterprise licenses.

If you're planning a business model that the university would not be interested in, you should be able to get them to confirm a lack of interest. This leaves you with the issue of whether you've developed something patentable. I've never been in that position so I wouldn't know, but I'm curious about how a university would respond to a student open-sourcing every piece of code they develop as they go. Academically this seems a great thing to do, but universities are commercial enterprises, and they might take a dim view.

The usual "I am not a lawyer" caveat applies to everything I've written here. I'd also strongly advise against any action that is likely to see you go up against a university's legal department, because they'd crush you :)

[0] https://www.cambridgestudents.cam.ac.uk/your-course/examinat...

[1] https://governance.admin.ox.ac.uk/legislation/statute-xvi-pr... and https://governance.admin.ox.ac.uk/legislation/council-regula...

[dan-robertson]

I’ve heard that Cambridge felt they were having problems with training up students with machine learning PhDs only for them to turn around and disappear into high-paying jobs in industry (rather than going on to the academic jobs the university thought they were training them for.) I think the university is putting some of their own funding into PhD (and undergraduate) students and so they felt like they were getting a poor deal and instituted some policies to try to reduce this from happening, and the opinion was that it was just terrible for the universities computer science department because good candidates would not subject themselves to the new conditions.

But that might just be outdated or inaccurate or totally wrong.

[mijoharas]

I believe Cambridge is quite good (the best in the UK I believe) at spin-outs (at least for hard-tech companies) and that's what has given rise to the "silicon fen" [0] and "the cambridge phenomenon" [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Fen

[1] https://cambridgephenomenon.com/phenomenon/

[michaelt]

I've got some sympathy for this in the case of countries other than the US and China.

After all, if Stanford does research funded by the US taxpayer, develops a new ML technology and gives it away for free, Google/Facebook will make a bunch of money from it, which they'll pay US taxes on.

But if École Polytechnique does research funded by the French taxpayer, develops a new ML technology and gives it away for free? Google/Facebook will make a bunch of money from it, which they'll pay US taxes on - while the French economy will see a much smaller upside.

[marcus_holmes]

> Google/Facebook will make a bunch of money from it, which they'll pay US taxes on.

hahahhaahhaaa. Um no. Possibly some Irish taxes? Maybe some Virgin Islands taxes?

[kortilla]

You’re confusing federal income tax with federal taxes in general. Google pays significant federal taxes any time they grant out stock or pay cash to employees/execs via payroll taxes.

There isn’t a way to avoid the taxation when that excess profit leaves the company somehow to shareholders. Even buybacks that cause stock appreciation lead to significant fed revenue when people sell.

[emodendroket]

At the very least they're going to be doing payroll taxes.

[marcus_holmes]

Google and Facebook are both multinational companies, employing people in many different countries. I guess there's probably a majority of their payroll expenses in the USA, but I have no idea.

[andi999]

It depends a bit on the subject, but most IP generated by grad students is not worth much. Of course if you specialize in something where you see the commercial possibility from the beginning and aim to do that to start your company:ok, consider this things, otherwise don't bother.

[Jhsto]

> most IP generated by grad students is not worth much

I have heard this a lot. My counterargument is that if that is the case, why do they want the IP anyway? Of course they can say that the IP is half created by the professor, but on the other hand, isn't that what I am paying for the university?

> where you see the commercial possibility from the beginning and aim to do that to start your company

And yes, if you personally plan to have any stake in the IP you have to think this beforehand: you must have a stake in the private company that funds your studies. Otherwise (and in the best case, i.e. 50% split) the IP will just be split between the university and your funder. So, you have to start a company in order to ever own any IP personally. I was told that LLCs for PhDs are somewhat common nowadays by the university IP people.

Generally, I think making a billion or a million dollars on my PhD project are extraordinarily slim, but it is not like these constraints exactly help either. The way I see it, is that I already take a financial toll in opportunity costs by doing a PhD. It is borderline charity when you also give the black-swan option to the university to own all proceeds if it ever becomes of significant impact, which I thought be the whole point of science.

The whole DD process has been quite frustrating to me, as you can see, but it also makes me wonder how does the current system even produce anything worth of significance given the lacklustre incentives. Finally, FWIW, yes the topic is computer science: the IP restrictions do not concern any other subject.

[andi999]

Just to address the first point. Often a group has a software basis where probably 100 PhD years contributed. This of course has value for the group (it might even have a general value), but this wouldn't be possible if you kept your IP. So yes the work under a professor giving good guidance and ideas to a couple of PhD students has value. But this value shd be attributed if any to the professor. And here you could say, well it was funded by the university so it belongs to them. Here you could make a point that the prof shd get the IP.

[ezoe]

Pay to research and pay to use the fruits of your research? What kind of shameless parasite are they?

[majormajor]

> But, most seem to declare that the work is owned at least in part by the funding source, which seems fair to me.

There's a dark side here - and the common refrain of "if paid for with public money, it should be in the public domain" - of normalizing the power of capital holders compared to the people doing the work. Most of the time, that idea is going to have bad public outcomes, so I don't like playing into it with regard to journals and research publications.