An important question that many undergraduate physics students ask is, "What can one do with a physics degree?" Of course there are many answers to this question. Often a general reference to becoming a lawyer is given as a possible answer. This paper is intended to explain the field of patent law and how a physics degree can lead to an…

In 1978, the Board of Cooperative Educational Services, a consortium of public school districts in upstate New York, was sued by the Encyclopedia Britannica Educational Corporation because the consortium taped educational programs broadcast on local public television stations and provided copies to local schools. This case, known as…

Learning Management Systems, or LMSs, are widely used throughout higher education to deliver a range of instructional services including content delivery, discussion boards and collaborative work space, testing tools, and gradebook functions. LMSs can be used asynchronously or synchronously in support of online learning, classroom-based learning,…

When Starwood Hotels charged Hilton Hotels with industrial espionage, the case hinged on an employment agreement that two executives had violated. The rhetoric of the employment agreement contrasted greatly with that of the corporation's own code of business conduct. Whereas the private agreement stressed narrow self-interest, the public code…

The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of technology commercialization on researcher practice and productivity at U.S. universities. Using data drawn from licensing contract documents and databases of university-industry linkages and faculty research output, the study findings suggest that the common practice of licensing…

Sarah L. Kieweg had her own nice surprise when the University of Central Florida contacted her. She understood quite a bit about her father's pioneering work on artificial intelligence in the 1990s. Still, in 2006, eight years after he died of a heart attack, at age 50, the call from the university came out of the blue: some of James R. Driscoll's…

Today's higher education environment is marked by heightened accountability and decreased budgets. In such an environment, no higher education institution can afford to ignore alternative approaches that could result in more effective and less costly solutions. Open-source software (OSS) can serve as a viable alternative to traditional proprietary…

This article reports that young inventors at a Maryland high school are not only learning scientific principles, but also teamwork and the tenets of patent law. Twice a week, 10 members of the Clarksburg High School's Coyote Inventors Club gather in a second-floor computer lab to peck away at building a deceptively simple device: a cable that…

As online learning continues to grow, so do the free or nearly free Web 2.0 and emerging online learning technologies available to faculty and students. This chapter explores the implementation process and corresponding considerations of adapting such tools for teaching and learning. Issues addressed include copyright, intellectual property,…

Although many students have some knowledge of patents, it can be difficult for them to understand the components of an innovator's decision-making process. Key issues, such as whether to patent or to use trade secrecy, how broad a scope to claim, and what to do in the event of patent infringement, can be difficult to grasp from a standard lecture.…

In this article, the author shares how his fourth-grade students' creative thinking concerning a long-standing research problem stimulated changes in his instructional strategies. He begins by providing an example which illustrates that the standard tool of democracy, the plurality vote, suffers serious deficiencies: "The winner can be the…

This project explores the way information about law is transformed into organizational policies and practices. Existing literature emphasizes the state and organized professional groups as primary interpreters of the law and as creators of legal implementation strategies in the organizational setting. This case study of university responses to…

In spite of the extensive research on universities' entrepreneurship, whether research strength fosters or dampens their entrepreneurial performance remains controversial. Much research claims an influential role of research universities in regional economy, however, little has been said about what a part that the agglomeration economies may play…

Educators at Thomas A. Edison Middle School have worked together to bring invention information and activities to life. One activity in particular, Ping-Pong Ball Invention Challenge, has proven a great success. The Ping-Pong Ball Invention Challenge was inspired by the basic rules for PBS's "Design Squad"'s "Pop Fly" activity. In this article,…

Most chemical engineering programs that offer M.S. and Ph.D. degrees have a common seminar series for all the graduate students. Many would agree that seminars lack student interest, leading to ineffectiveness. We questioned the possibility of adding value to the seminar series by incorporating non-technical topics that may be more important to…