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Comment by luckylion | Hacker News Reader

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luckylion

> That the research is the property of the state because they paid for the PhD?

And the research, presumably.

> First, many research universities are private, so aren't funded by the state.

They don't get funding from the state, even if they are private entities? Are you absolutely sure?

> Second, most research projects are funded by grants not from the state - it comes from industry and places like that.

Again: 100% sure, your "most" applies?

> Third, even if they are funding it, why isn't funding the creation of companies (employers!) a good thing for the state?

It might be, it might not be. The company may generate lots of taxes, the company also may just move to a tax haven and tell society to screw off.

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State funding sources for scientific research generally /want/ the research to be commercialized and incentivize this. They could require state ownership as condition of funding, but choose not to. A sibling comment cited the Bayh-Dole act, which created the current paradigm of private ownership of inventions stemming from federally funded research contracts. The nominal motivation was that the state had proven to be ineffective at promoting the commercialization and use of the technology resulting from its research contracts. Since then, federal research agencies have implemented programs specifically meant to guide researchers through early-stage commercialization [0] and to provide additional funds to support commercialization [1].

[0] https://www.nibib.nih.gov/research-funding/concept-clinic-co... [1] https://sbir.nih.gov/

This is a bewildering POV. If the research is published its public domain. If they then want to use that research to start a company why not? You could too if you read their dissertation and understood it well enough.

Interestingly, the comment you are responding to imply none of what you said.

It simply states some facts and corrects parents misconceptions about how research is funded.

This is false.

1. Universities can and regularly do file patents, including public unis and including research funded with federal grants. See the Bayh-Dole Act.

2. Researchers can and often do choose not to publish research or research output (eg code) that might be commercially valuable.

3. Even the papers, including open access ones that can download and read for free, are almost never public domain.

Publication does not equate to public domain: the manuscript itself is likely subject to some sort of copyright, and the underlying research may be the subject matter of one or more patents (pending or otherwise).

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