University of Waterloo

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Thursday, July 6, 1995

UW will get "intellectual property" policy

The provost has made public the report that he received a few weeks ago from the "advisory committee on intellectual property", chaired by the dean of research, Gary Waller. The report is available on UWinfo, and paper copies can be had on request from the university secretariat, ext. 2749.

A memo from the provost, Jim Kalbfleisch, summarizes what it's about:

The Report recommends, among other things, the development of a comprehensive policy on Intellectual Property, including authorship, patents, software, copyright, and materials developed for teaching. The policy should contain a statement of principle, default options for sharing IP rights, and mechanisms for informal and formal dispute resolution. A drafting committee will be struck to begin work on this policy early in the Fall term.

And here's a key paragraph from the report itself:

A strictly legal framework for and approach to IP, based closely on copyrights, patent, and the like, is not sufficient within a university community. Things important in an academic culture are outside of, and can be contradictory to, strictly legal concerns. Academics value openness, sharing of ideas, and scholarly community, and the primary goals are to increase and disseminate knowledge. Efforts to increase and to communicate bodies of knowledge are at the heart of the academic endeavour. Sometimes the "products" of these endeavours represent "property" that needs to be "protected" in the legal sense. But the creation of commercially valuable property is not the only, or even the primary, goal. Within a university community, "protection" of IP has quite a different meaning. When one seeks to protect IP, in the academic, collegial sense, it usually means assurance that proper credit is given to those who are responsible for developing it.

I'll have more about the report in next week's Gazette, of course.

When the lights went out

Most of the UW campus was spared when a power failure hit Waterloo North Hydro shortly after 9 yesterday morning, blacking out a large section of the city. Cause of the failure: "a feeder shorted" in the Eby Rush transformer station on Fischer-Hallman Road. Power was off for about an hour and a quarter.

All four of UW's church colleges lost their power, as did the Columbia Icefield and 156 Columbia Street. Most of the campus (including the Optometry building) has power feeds both from Eby Rush and from another transformer station that wasn't affected by the failure, so the problem wasn't noticeable here, although there were reports of feeble voltage in the afternoon as Waterloo North Hydro worked to repair the damage. The blackout also snarled traffic on University Avenue.

Yes, the Shads are here

As mentioned in the Bulletin earlier this week, the Shad Valley program is happening on campus again this summer: an intense, life-changing four weeks for a few dozen very bright high school students. They're living at Conrad Grebel College, and spending their time in a mixture of lectures and workshops, social events, tours and projects.

Ed Jernigan of the department of systems design engineering is program director for the Shad Valley program at Waterloo, and Tanya Reeves is program manager. About ten other people from systems design and other deprtments are making the program happen.

Chris Redmond
Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
(519) 888-4567 ext. 3004
credmond@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca

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