Tony Brown Revisited: One Triumph for Student Intellectual Property

In 2009, the University of Missouri (MU) senior journalism student, Tony Brown, was pretty much living the dream. Preparing for graduation in May and contemplating graduate school.

Except he was frustrated with how difficult it was to find available apartments and other real estate properties quickly and conveniently.

So, Brown did what many college students do. He sat in class and daydreamed about a solution. Mapping out an app that would work on the recently introduced Apple iPhone.

Brown teamed up with two computer science doctoral students, Dan Wang and Peng Zhuang, along with Zhenhua Ma, a doctoral student in electrical and computer engineering.

NearBuy was the app they conceived to help real estate shoppers.

Using mapping and filtering technology driven by proprietary code, NearBuy showed area listings, directions, and contact information, and would even interface with local realtors.

NearBuy was designed to be free to users, with the eventual strategy of charging real estate professionals a fee on properties purchased or leased through the app.

NearBuy won MU’s 2009 Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) Student Innovation Competition. The app had about 250,000 downloads over an 18-month period.

The RJI Competition victory earned the four MU students a trip to Apple’s 2009 Worldwide Developer Conference. Within weeks, companies were asking to partner with Brown and his co-creators to further develop and commercialize NearBuy.

And that’s when things got complicated.

MU attorneys caught wind of all the hubbub surrounding NearBuy and came knocking. MU initially demanded a 25% ownership stake, along with two-thirds of any eventual profits.

To Brown’s credit, he pushed back at MU, despite a fair amount of intimidation. Citing the fact that no one ever explained any of this to his team before the RJI Competition.

To MU’s credit, they quickly course-corrected and realized that the policies of the university were anything but clear. They also, likely, saw a looming public relations nightmare developing.

For some reason, this story caught the attention of me and my colleagues.

And sent chills up our spines.

We immediately reviewed the policies at our institution related to student inventions and realized that they were about as clear as San Francisco fog. In conversations with colleagues at other institutions, the only thing that was clear was that we were not alone.

For those outside academics, the primary goal of research universities, like MU, is to generate new knowledge, technological innovations, and economic development opportunities.

And those responsibilities are not necessarily unique to research universities, as comprehensive schools, that specialize primarily in teaching, also engage in research.

The conversion of this new knowledge and innovation into economic benefits falls under a large heading called “technology transfer.” Part of that tech transfer process also includes defining how to handle intellectual property, such as copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets.

Broadly, any work done on campus using college or university resources typically falls under the tech transfer/IP policies of the institution.

Those policies, however, are generally directed at work done by faculty, student workers, researchers, and graduate assistants in labs or other campus facilities for university projects and initiatives or specific grant-funded research.

The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, for example, made it possible for colleges and universities to financially benefit from federally funded research through the technology transfer process.

Very little, however, was written in tech transfer policies about ideas organically generated in the classroom, because of class projects and assignments—or daydreaming students.

And that was a problem for entrepreneurship and innovation programs in particular.

The inventor’s mindset looms large over entrepreneurship courses. No one wants to see their great ideas threatened in any way.

And students are very aware of this.

I have personally been questioned, for instance, a few dozen times over the past 20 years about what the university’s role would be regarding successful student ideas.

That’s a compelling sample size. Especially for a bunch of college students who are, allegedly, only interested in TikTok, Snapchat, and Friday night’s frat party.

In the face of clearer policy, my stock answer used to be to reassure students that no one at the university was trying to steal their idea (hopefully) and that in the day and age of “going viral,” the scales of public relations had tilted in their favor.

That was a fairly crappy answer to a really important question, but it was the best I could do at the time.

So, where are we today?

As entrepreneurial activity explodes around the world and entrepreneurship programming continues to ramp up at colleges and universities, have institutions responded with clearer IP and tech transfer policies to address future Tony Brown’s?

Good question.

Based on the studies I have reviewed, I am relatively confident that the days of draconian policies, where attorneys go knocking on dorm room doors demanding that students give up a cut of their class venture ideas are probably over.

Probably.

And students should assure those days are over by loudly demanding that schools revamp outdated tech transfer policies to promote entrepreneurship and innovation.

Students interested in studying entrepreneurship should pay attention to these policies too.

One way to make universities change is by students choosing one school over another based on those rules. And letting the losing school know why.

Students should have clarity with regard to these rules. "Don't worry about it" is not a policy.

Publications, like US News and World Report, that rank entrepreneurship programs should also pay closer attention to tech transfer and IP policies. They should develop a ranking index just for those rules because they matter.

Colleges and universities that champion entrepreneurship must be facilitators of great student ideas. Respecting that the students paid a lot of money to be there, their classroom innovations should be uniquely their own.

Institutions need to also recognize the long-term, big picture view of having a “hands-off” policy regarding ideas and innovations generated in entrepreneurship programs.

There are, literally, countless stories of entrepreneurs who generously donated to their alma maters because those institutions supported and championed their ideas as students. And it may not even be one particular idea, but the experience the student had.

To be fair, students need to be clear that IP is not some financial panacea either. The percentages are not great. And no one should know that better than universities, given some of the paltry tech transfer revenues generated by institutions.

Unfortunately, stories about student IP policies don’t get a lot of press. Frankly, they are difficult for people to understand and report on. There are a lot of legalities to unpack. Plus, many of these institutions know they are treading in dangerous PR territory.

Unless someone specifically brings these stories forward, they often go unreported.

Hats off to Tony Brown. He deserves credit for standing up to a large state university with over 30,000 students and thousands more faculty, staff, and administrators and saying, “Hey, wait a minute.”

Predictably, Brown never really made money from the NearBuy app. But he had the unique opportunity of developing that idea from scratch which likely became a cornerstone of his future success in life.

Isn’t that what experiential education is all about?

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Immersed in a life of entrepreneurship, Tom Clement offers LinkedIn readers the insights of an entrepreneur, academic, contractor, author, venture coach, and consultant. Clement is an assistant professor at Minnesota State University, Mankato. He specializes in the “how” and “why” questions that help entrepreneurs discover their customers, business models, and passion.