http://www/cu/provost/docs/copyright.html
A brief history:
A draft of this policy was published, two town meetings were held and some discussion took place in the Faculty Senate. I attended both town meetings but was not aware of the Senate meeting when the policy was discussed.
After seeing a second draft which still did not permit AcIS and other Columbia University employees to GPL their code, as we have always traditionally done, I circulated a petition which was duly presented to the Provost. Apparently it had no impact.
The current policy nonetheless requires all employees who create works in which the University may wish to claim ownership, to file a notice with a special committee, the composition of which has not yet been determined. If the employee wishes to release his work under the GPL, he must appeal to this same committee, which will then make the determination as to whether "the benefits to the public of making such works freely available outweigh any advantages that might be derived from commercialization."
The Provost's annual letter to the University senate has this interesting paragraph:
Last spring, we adopted a new copyright policy that was developed by a committee of faculty and administrators, reviewed extensively with the members of the University community and unanimously endorsed by the Senate before being adopted by the Trustees. Having achieved a widespread consensus on the new policy, we must now work to ensure its successful implementation. The new policy calls for a standing committee to oversee its operation and adjudicate disputes when they arise. The committee will be chaired by Ira Katznelson of Political Science and Jane Ginsburg of Law who co-chaired the committee that created the new policy, and will include 15 members, a large majority of whom are faculty. It will also include one student. In addition to working with that committee, we will need develop the necessary mechanisms for faculty and others to disclose works which should be copyrighted in Columbia's name, evaluate their commercial value, license them to the private sector and share any revenues we may realize among their creators and units of the University. The newly established Columbia Media Enterprises will play a role in handling copyrightable materials of commercial value similar to that of Columbia Innovation Enterprises (CIE) with respect to patentable innovations coming out of research by Columbia faculty and research.
Fathom.com:
Part of Morningside Ventures, the semi-commercial wing Of Columbia University, this group intends to put course material online for distance learning. The initial announcement from the Public Affairs office is here.
They are vying to be the exclusive Internet outlet for course materials originating from Columbia University professors.
Patents:
Columbia University is among the most aggressive univerisites in going to Congress to get special extensions for patents about to expire. A recent example is the request for an extension for the gene-splicing technology used to manufacture proteins used in certain drugs.
The group behind the lobbying: Columbia Innovation Enterprise, at http://web.columbia.edu/cu/cie/. You may find it very interesting to read their news releases.
The Provost's annual letter also has an interesting paragraph about these efforts:
Thanks to the creativity of our faculty and the work of Columbia Innovation Enterprises (CIE) in realizing the commercial potential of their discoveries, Columbia now ranks first among universities by a significant margin in revenues from patentable innovations. Last year, our income from licenses and research agreements rose by 46 percent to $166.3 million, bringing the total revenues from these sources since the start of our technology transfer program in 1982 to almost $640 million. For further information on last year's results of the program, readers may consult CIE's annual report for 1999-2000 at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cie/ar9900.html.
As I have warned in my recent annual letters, several lucrative patents have now run out. In the near future, therefore, our revenues are likely to drop sharply. However, CIE, under the new leadership of Michael Cleare who joined the University in September, is introducing a business plan to grow patent and research revenues at a significant pace over the next few years to replace the lost income. While the biomedical sciences continue to generate most of our licensing revenues, the physical sciences and engineering are becoming an increasingly important contributors. For example, we are now licensing technologies to companies that improve electronic displays, digital cameras and medical imaging and still others for the next generation of telecommunications networking protocols. We expect our recent success in the physical sciences and engineering to continue, with the result that our revenues from those sources could grow by a factor of three or four in the coming year. Overall, our technology transfer program has been so successful that one of the tasks Michael will undertake this year is to reorganize CIE to manage its rapidly expanding range of activities.