Why Commercial Development at GSU Cannot Possibly Succeed.
We’ve been getting the occasional, “Why don’t you try to build a business” email of late.
Here’s why not.
- Computer Science
The intellectual property rules at GSU say that the university owns every thing you write that is a program. The lawyers say we might license your work to you, and then we might not. It depends.
Forget launching a company under those conditions.
- Biology/Chemistry
Things are better here. You get to keep the first $20,000 you make. Hurrah. Lets say you launch a start up and it does OK. You make, say $100,000 which is not bad, then the company gets $25,000. Oh well, lets try harder $200,000, you get $30,000. Hmmmn, somethings wrong here. The return is so low that you cannot possibly survive as a company.
On the other hand if you write a book of fiction you get to keep everything you earn. I suppose they might change that, but who am I kidding.