University Involvement

Russell S. Jones Jr., an attorney representing the University of Missouri, wrote to Dr. Suppes that "your continued refusal to comply with the university's requests, its rules and the rulings of the university's Patent Committee has left (us) with no choice but to pursue its rights in court."

But with their internal process not yet exhausted and their researcher willing to work within Missouri's sytem, why circumvent the process and head to court?

Suppes says the University opting for the court system was "an effective way to terminate the grievance panel from making a recommendation" because, he adds, "the grievance results would be very embarrassing to the University and so one of the prospects of a lawsuit is that the primary objective is to try to bully me into submission."

And, despite being unsure of whether the courts would give him or Mizzou ownership of his intellectual property, Suppes assigned his inventor rights in all of his inventions to the school in November 2008, except the patent based on provisional patent applications dating over a year prior to his accepting the position at Mizzou.

So with the assignments executed, why did the University initiate a lawsuit? When the Federal court rejected Missouri's suit for lack of jurisdiction in April 2009, the University filed again in their local Boone County civil court. Why the doggedness in pursuit of a valued research scientist who had substantially caved in to their demands?

Every U.S. research university requires faculty inventors to disclose innovations. However, what is unique about the University of Missouri is that its disclosure form, by design, assigns all rights in the work to the school. If the invention is later determined to not meet requirements for Mizzou ownership, the faculty members must request the rights in their work to be given back to them.

Suppes says the University has "been sitting on the rights to his inventions" since he came to Missouri in 2001 and believes this is done "rather than risk turning over a profit generating technology" back to the inventor.

Gary Forsee, President of the University of Missouri, has even admitted that, "Our university has not done a great job in putting the processes and systems and resources in place... We are trying to cobble together some incremental funding so we can do tech transfer, which requires business case development and requires us to find how to take good ideas and get them some seed money."

With the passage of Bayh-Dole in 1980, research universities have now had nearly three decades to hone their technology transfer processes. Doesn't the acknowledgment of the shortcomings of Mizzou's technology transfer system by President Forsee seem to underscore the assertions of both Suppes and Phillips? And is it the same systemic flaws that are driving the lawsuit against its professor?