UW CSE Invention Disclosures by Graduate Students

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By the terms of their employment agreements, UW faculty are obligated to disclose inventions to OTL.

Some grad students have sensibly asked if this requirement pertains to them. In a nutshell:

• No, graduate students are not required to disclose inventions.
• Unless they are supported on some sort of research contract that requires it.
• But conflict-of-interest disclosures are another matter -- they must be filed if relevant.
• And it is the faculty advisor's job to ensure that this happens.

Below is some more detail, excerpted from some email messages received when we looked into this.

Grad students have no special obligation to disclose other than the ones imposed by contractual obligations to which they have agreed. When they use a material covered by an MTA which says IP must be disclosed, then they have an obligation. If they are supported by an industry sponsored research agreement which says they must disclose, then they must, etc.

Conflict of interest disclosures are another matter. As I interpret policy, a graduate student who is an investigator on a sponsored research project does have an obligation to disclose any Significant Financial Interest (that's a defined term) via the GIM 10 process, and it's the PI's responsibility to make sure those disclosures are made.

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