Intellectual Property Ownership Model in Academia: An Analysis

Abstract

University ownership model of intellectual property rights (IPR) has been widely used by universities all around the world. With the new awareness on the importance of IPR universities are keener to obtain ownership on any IP created within the vicinity of the universty in order to ensure smooth technology transfer and commercialization of the IP. This paper analyses other model of IPR ownership in order to boost invention and innovation within Malaysian Research Universities. Through the right ownership model, universities hoped that revenue generated from the university IP could be used to fund new research at the universities. However, with all the excitement to commercialize the university IP, inventors sometimes are left with little benefit from their inventions which have dampened their motivation to continue with research and produce more new inventions. Thus from this analysis we suggest that Malaysia as an emerging economies and actively seeking to encourage university invention, commercialization and entrepreneureship should experiment with different model of intellectual property ownership.