By Philip Mendes

In Part 1 the extent to which a university IP policy is legally binding upon a university’s staff was considered. In this part we consider that question in relation to students, both undergraduate, and postgraduate.

The IP policies of universities and research organizations (for brevity, the term “university” is employed, and refers not just to a university, but to all forms of a non-for-profit research organization) seek, by force of the policy alone, to change where the ownership of IP lies. The university, by the force of its IP policy alone, seeks to expropriate the ownership of the IP.