All Hands Meeting 2004

Intellectual Property Task Force

Anders Dale, Jeff Grethe, Amarnath Gupta,Ron Kikinis, John Lauriello, Steve Pieper, Gary Glover

IP Task Force Mission

Develop policies for publication of experimental results by BIRN members and those who use BIRN data/technology

Develop policies for dissemination of BIRN technology within BIRN and to outside investigators, e.g. image analysis algorithms, software, paradigms, protocols

Develop policies for dissemination of BIRN data to outside investigators

This Presentation

Background on Issues• Authorship• Inventions• NIH Policies for Proposals• Technology (Software) Licenses and Examples

Open Discussion

Harvard Authorship Policies (Motivation)

Authorship• Substantial and Direct Intellectual Contributions• Intellectual Responsibility• Review and Approve Final Manuscript

Acknowledgement• All Other Significant Contributions (Funding, Lab Space,

etc.) http://www.hms.harvard.edu/integrity/authorship.html

BIRN Authorship Policies

Vary by Testbed• Consortium as (Senior) Author

FIRST BIRN most consistent, Some Cross-Testbed Examples Grethe JS, Jovicich J, Martone ME, Pieper S, Brown GG, Ellisman MH,

Gollub RL, Brain Morphometry BIRN, Mouse BIRN, FIRST BIRN, BIRN Coordinating Center (2003) The Biomedical Informatics Research Network: Educational and Teaching Resources. Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting, New Orleans, USA.

Acknowledge BIRN and Individual Grants• Example

The authors would like to thank all the past and current Slicer developers. Special thanks to David Gering, Lauren O’Donnell and Nicole Aucoin for significant design and engineering contributions. This investigation was supported by NIH grant P41 RR13218 and the Biomedical Informatics Research Network (www.nbirn.net).

• Question: Should ALL Site’s Grants be Acknowledged?

Invention Policies (Patents)

Partners / BHW Corporate Sponsored Research and Licensing• No Up-Front Agreement on Patents• Intellectual Property Law Provides Ample Precedent to

Determine Inventorship• Wait Until Something Worth Patenting is Invented, then

Determine who Invented it and to what Extent.• Each Inventor’s Interests may be Governed by Prior

Agreements with their Institutions NSF ERC Consortium as Example

• Much Time can be Spent Defining Rules which Don’t Apply in Practice

NIH Policies and BIRN Proposals

Morphometry BIRN Letter of Intent to Share Signed by Each Applicant Site• NIH Requirement: The applicant and all Investigators, with their

business officials, must provide assurances of their intention to share promptly and widely with the broad research community, as appropriate: data; tools, including software and databases; and scientific and technologic best practices and processes developed in the test bed, including those in collaboration with other BIRN test beds and the Coordinating Center.

• NIH Requirement: The applicant must agree to develop, with the other test beds and the Coordinating Center, policies and procedures that facilitate access by the scientific community to the BIRN infrastructure and test bed resources.

Some Issues:• Does not Specify License Type or Cost of License

Software Licenses

Open Source• Gnu Public License (www.gnu.org)

“Copyleft”, must distribute source code, must distribute modifications

E.g. Linux• “Berkeley” Style or “MIT” or “X” License

No Copyleft, preferred to enable commercialization• Non-Commercial Licenses

Common for research packages• Non-Clinical Licenses

Limit liability, e.g. Slicer

Binary Only Licenses

Copyright

Reflects Ownership and Control• Happens Automatically with Creation• Should be Noted on Creation (e.g. This Talk is Copyright

2004 Steve Pieper, All Rights Reserved!)• Can be Registered with Trademark Office

Can Be Transferred or Retained• E.g. Many Bug Fixes to Linux Become Copyright Linus

Torvalds, other Modules Retain Author Copyright• Contributions to VTK Become Copyright Ken Martin, Will

Schroeder, Bill Lorensen• NLM ITK Project Established the Insight Consortium as

Copyright Holder

Example: Morphometry BIRN Tools

Freely Available For Research UseTool Purpose Source

Code Restrictions on Use

Web Site

3D Slicer Visualization, Protocol Neutral Segmentation, Query Atlas

Yes Non-clinical use only

www.slicer.org

Freesurfer Protocol-Specific Segmentation

No Non-clinical, non-commercial research only

http://surfer.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu

LDDMM Morphometric and DTI Shape Analysis

No Must be accessed through JHU or BIRN Portal

http://cis.jhu.edu/software/lddmm

LONI Pipeline Grid Enabled Processing Environment

No Non-clinical, non-commercial research only

http://www.loni.ucla.edu/NCRR/Software/Pipeline.html

Duke/UNC Tools Protocol Neutral and DTI processing

Yes Research Use only http://www.cs.unc.edu/~gerig/soft.html

Discussion Issues

Jointly Developed Software• BIRN ID Generator Example• Non-Software IP: paradigms, schemata, derived data…

Pre-Existing / Contributed IP• From other Grants / Agencies / Companies…• Ongoing Coopetition

Use by Other Entities• Commercialization, Citation, Copyleft?• What is Our Process for Approving

And More….

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