http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/01/students-upgrade-wobo.phphttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/education/edlife/whoseidea-t.html?_r=1&ref=edlife...Mr. Zummo and his classmate Matthew Naples, who was attending the meeting via speakerphone, had designed a water bottle that could be filled with sand and reused as a brick to build housing in developing countries. The director of the office, Charles Rancourt, sitting across the table from Mr. Zummo, wanted to know: When had they come up with their design? Had they held brainstorming sessions on campus or off? What equipment had they used to produce their prototypes?
Colleges and universities own the ideas and technologies invented by the people who work for them, including professors and graduate students who are paid to do research. Most universities also own inventions created by students using a significant amount of their resources, even if the inventors are undergraduates like Mr. Zummo and Mr. Naples, both 21.
The question of whether the two students or R.P.I. owned their invention was a tricky one. They had first designed plastic bottles that snapped together, Lego style, with two other students for a freshman design class project that challenged them to solve a social problem. Their idea was to keep the billions of water bottles that people in developing nations throw away each year out of landfills while providing the poor with free building materials. They presented a paper and a prototype in class, but “it was a crude concept, and we never really hit our goals with our first rendition,” Mr. Naples says.
As juniors, he and Mr. Zummo decided to....
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