Rights to Mentored Research Concepts and Results

A postdoctoral student working in a lab for several years is offered a faculty position at another university.  He asks his advisor to write a summary of his accomplishments.  The advisor appends to this a list of research materials that the student may not take with him when leaving the lab, as well as a list of research areas--some not yet under investigation--and a statement that the student agrees not to work in these areas.  The advisor asks the student to sign a copy of this document.  How should the student respond?

W8Y says:  The postdoctoral student should not sign the paper.  And, indeed, the student is a better judge of his own accomplishments and should provide the information himself under these circumstances.  The student must respect the mentor's wish that research materials not be taken from the lab.  The student should copy whatever data he produced, however, and then hurry up and write the papers.  The case of the patent rights to lasers provides instruction here.  Gould had the presence of mind to get his notebook notarized.  The laser patent was granted to Townes and Schawlow, and Gould's application was turned down.  Gould fought, however, and a decade and a half later he was given a window of opportunity so that he received his fourth and final laser patent nearly three decades after Townes and Schawlow received their award.

Returning to the issue of rights to mentored research, it seems clear that the patent courts recognize the worker, as is generally true in competing claims to intellectual contributions.  The student must protect himself and, in the absence of a contractual arrangement, he has first right to the data and its eventual disposition.