Ownership of Data and Right of Use

Your research project has leased a new, state-of-the-art piece of laboratory equipment that prints graphical displays in full color.  The manufacturer has posted a technician on site at your lab for several weeks to get the equipment up and running.  At the end of his last day, the technician asks to take about twenty printouts, created with data from your project while he was monitoring your analysis and calibrating the equipment.  He wants these for use in sales presentations and possibly in a brochure.  He explains that your data was incidental to obtaining the output and it was his machine which produced the printouts.  Should you permit this?

K5R says:  Data derived from leased laboratory equipment does not belong to the equipment manufacturer.  Material for brochures must be derived from in-house experiments, not from those taken from investigators using the equipment.  This could pose problems with copyright later when data is to be published in journals and there is an issue of prior publication in a brochure.