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Comment please get it straight (Score 1) 383

Guys, please get it straight. I know how this works in a company (as I have 4 patents in my name) and I assume, it would work similar with Universities also (reasons below).

First of all, with patents you have an ASSIGNEE as well as INVENTOR. The Company you work for by consent decree, owns all your intellectual property (in almost all cases), so anything you invent and file for patent while working with a company, you are the Inventor, but Company is the ASSIGNEE, it gets the right to use it/productize it and sue another.

If you don't want that, quit the company and file it with you as the ASSIGNEE and INVENTOR.

Most people wont do that, because Inventions are incremental additions over existing features, companies generally have pools of patents to protect itself from infringement accusations.

This works out for Individual's also because they get the Recognition, Money and they realize that their feature wont make a startup by itself. (If it does make and you have courage to do it, then as I said, an employee should quit and go for it all alone).

How is it expected to work different with Univerisity?

Both ASSIGNEE and INVENTOR be Student itself?
Well consider the case, student graduates and remembers his university using the software, which he owns (ASSIGNEE) patent and finds that its a 'teaser-time'. You wont need much imagination to come up with the things can do to earn money.

When at University and while working as student, I think it is a safe measure to either.
a) Student(s) - Inventor(s) and Univ - ASSIGNEE
b) Student(s) - Inventor(s) and Student(s) and Univ - ASSIGNEE.

I personally prefer option b) and I think this is what the articles and comment wish to suggest as how things should be.

IT

Submission + - Scientific Holidays in 2009

Phoe6 writes: "I and my friends were having a dinner table discussion as which days we would look forward to in the year 2009. Pi day (3/14 in MM/DD format and 22/7 in DD/MM format), then Mole day(6/23) struck in my mind. There is Towel's Day, worthy of note and then Newtonmas which we had just celebrated. What are other secular and scientific holidays that you would look for? Starting of the LHC again?"
Programming

Submission + - Guido and Bruce Eckel discuss Python 3000

Phoe6 writes: "Leading author and programmer, Bruce Eckel, posted some of his concerns on Python 3000 stating that python community is missing to address some of the important issues with this major, backward incompatible release. Problems he mentions are concurrency support on multi-core cpus, easy deployment support, a standardized user interface amongst others. He expresses his dissatisfaction at the post titled "Python 3K or Python 2.9?. Guido van Rossum, in a very pragmatic way addresses the concerns with his response to Bruce Eckel and calling out more for developers to contribute to Python to improve it further. Bruce Eckel concludes with his thoughts that he wants his favorite language to be better with his reply to Guido's reply."
User Journal

Submission + - Where to go after a lifetime in the IT field?

Pikoro writes: "I have been working in the IT field for the past 20 years or so, and after getting hired by the largest financial company in the world, I thought I might have finally found a place to retire from.

However, after working here for about 6 months, I find myself, not exactly burnt out, but longing for a complete career field change.

It's not that doing IT related tasks aren't fun anymore, but they have become more "work" than "play" over the last few years.

Since all of my experience has been IT related, I'm not sure where I could go from here.

What would slashdot readers consider doing for a living after being in a single field for so long?"
Security

Submission + - Interview with muslix64, Developer of BackupHDDVD

SilverwoodUG writes: On December 26, 2006, a member of the Doom9.com forums named muslix64 introduced himself as circumventing the content protection — not the copy protection — of HD DVD. Additionally, he made available an open source program named BackupHDDDVD. At the time, this program was a command line program that bypassed the content protection — providing the individual successfully obtained the title and volume keys associated with the HD DVD. Once the individual has the keys, the AACS protection can be sidestepped, and the HD movie content can be extracted. According to muslix64, it took all of eight days to successfully circumvent HD DVD content protection.

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