Comment Fiduciary duties? (Score 3, Interesting) 182
I am a little concerned by the breadth of the Federal Circuit's ruling. It seems that the panel went far beyond the issue-at-hand (i.e., that a student researcher has standing to bring an inventorship claim -- an entirely reasonable proposition, I think) when it found the student's instructer to be the student's fiduciary. A finding of a fiduciary relationship has significant implications: in general, a fiduciary owes her benficiary a duty of care, loyalty, etc. For example, the lawyer-client relationship is a fiduciary relationship. I'm just not sure that we want to start making professors the fiduciaries of their students, and thereby impose upon those professors a significant new area of legal liability.
In addition, the scope of a fiduciary relationship is a question of state law (in this case, Illinois law), not Federal law -- a fact not brought out in the linked article. Thus, the panel is not only stretching the bounds of the fiduciary relationship, but also imposing liability based on its "best guess" as to what an Illinois state court would recognize. I am not aware of any Illinois opinion that holds that a professor is the fiduciary of his student (altho since I haven't looked at the question, I'm eager to be humbled by someone smarter).
In addition, the scope of a fiduciary relationship is a question of state law (in this case, Illinois law), not Federal law -- a fact not brought out in the linked article. Thus, the panel is not only stretching the bounds of the fiduciary relationship, but also imposing liability based on its "best guess" as to what an Illinois state court would recognize. I am not aware of any Illinois opinion that holds that a professor is the fiduciary of his student (altho since I haven't looked at the question, I'm eager to be humbled by someone smarter).
