Copyright 1996 National Public Radio NPR SHOW: Morning Edition (NPR 11:23 am ET) September 30, 1996 Transcript # 1966-10 "Disputes Rise Over Intellectual Property Rights" GUESTS: PETER TABORSKY, Being Sued for Stealing an Idea; NOREEN SEGRESS, Attorney for University of South Florida; LEONARD MINSKY, Director, National Coalition of Universities in the Public Interest; JEROME RIKEMAN, Professor of Law, Vanderbilt University BYLINE: CLAUDIO SANCHEZ; HIGHLIGHT: A debate is raging over intellectual property rights and who owns them. For the first in history, a man is being sued in a United States criminal court for stealing an idea - his idea. BODY: Disputes Rise Over Intellectual Property Rights BOB EDWARDS, Host: Colleges increasingly are relying on private corporations to pay for campus-based research. Both are delighted with the development; corporations get exclusive access to original research for bargain prices, colleges get to split the profits from new discoveries. At the same time, corporate funding has expanded the debate over intellectual property rights. Students and professors have found that the outcome to this debate isn't always simple, or fair.@PGPH NPR's Claudio Sanchez tells the story of Peter Taborsky [sp], a case in point. CLAUDIO SANCHEZ, Reporter: Peter Taborsky is the first person in the United States ever to be tried in a criminal court for stealing an idea, an idea that he says came to him while working as a lab assistant at the University of South Florida. PETER TABORSKY, Being Sued for Stealing an Idea: The discovery led to making- making it easier to reuse cat litter over and over. CLAUDIO SANCHEZ: Yes, cat litter, says Taborsky, who spoke to us from a Florida jail, or, to be more precise, a clay- like substance often compared to cat litter that takes on some amazing qualities when heated to 800degrees. That's what Taborsky did in a laboratory. The hotter the material got, the more absorbent it became in treating sewage. Waste water treatment would never be the same. @PGPH This was all back in the summer of 1988. Taborsky was about to graduate. He had been working for about a year at the school's chemical engineering lab for $8.50 an hour, not as a researcher but as a worker, assisting in the study of sewage water treatment. It was a project funded by Progressive Technologies Corporation, a subsidiary of a Tampa-based conglomerate that runs water and electric utilities in the region, but the research the company was directing was going nowhere, says Taborsky. That's why he started doing his own experiments, which nobody seemed to mind, or notice, until company officials and Taborsky's supervising professor realized he had discovered something valuable. PETER TABORSKY: I didn't have any idea of the value of the discovery at the time because the discovery was purely science, from my perspective. My reaction was also if I would be- what would I be entitled to as the inventor of the discovery? CLAUDIO SANCHEZ: [interviewing] And what did they say? PETER TABORSKY: The answer to that was that I would not be entitled to anything from the discovery. CLAUDIO SANCHEZ: And you didn't think that was fair? PETER TABORSKY: No, not at all, and it was at that point that I actually sought the advice of a patent counsel. CLAUDIO SANCHEZ: Shortly thereafter Taborsky fled with five notebooks he had kept on the lab work and quickly filed for a patent, believing it would protect his invention. The U.S. Patent Office determined that Taborsky was the inventor of a new highly efficient sewage treatment process. What the Patent Office could not do was award Taborsky ownership of his idea. That is what the University of South Florida and Progressive Technologies Corporation have been after for eight years now, because whatever Taborsky discovered, whatever he patented, he stole, says Noreen Segress [sp], an attorney for the university. NOREEN SEGRESS, Attorney for University of South Florida: Mr. Taborsky was hired to work as a research lab assistant, a student assistant in a lab, and he was hired using funds that a private sponsor contributed to the university to have this project done, and the university has- was at all times bound by a contract with the research sponsor. CLAUDIO SANCHEZ: Even if Taborsky made the discovery on his own, which the university has never conceded, but even if he did, says Segress- NOREEN SEGRESS: He used our lab, our equipment, and he walked out the door with the research results contrary to his- his agreement with us and our agreement with the research sponsor. CLAUDIO SANCHEZ: Agreement? What agreement, says Taborsky. The only agreement he ever signed had nothing to do with the research project, says Taborsky, but with a job offer from the company, an offer that Taborsky declined when the project was winding down. A six-person jury in the criminal case that the university brought against Taborsky didn't believe him. The jury convicted him of stealing notebooks containing over $20,000 worth of research and trade secrets. The jury never ruled who the inventor was or who owned the discovery. When the judge ordered Taborsky to relinquish the notebooks and sign his patent over to the university, Taborsky refused, so he was imprisoned. PETER TABORSKY: We never expected that I would go to jail or to prison, we thought it was just threats, and we never expected that they would push- that the university push- would push for prison. CLAUDIO SANCHEZ: For two months Taborsky was even put in shackles, clearing brush on a chain gang. It's unlike any case he's ever seen, says Leonard Minsky [sp], director of the National Coalition of Universities in the Public Interest, a watchdog group that monitors intellectual property rights and disputes in higher education. Minsky got involved in the Taborsky case after he went to go see him in jail. LEONARD MINSKY, Director, National Coalition of Universities in the Public Interest: It is unique, that is, the university persecuting one of its students, one of its most brilliant students I must say, to the point where they would put him in jail on behalf of a company, which is what they've done. Yeah, I agree that there's something strange and aberrational here, but, in fact, what it reveals is something generic about what universities are doing now in relation to intellectual property. CLAUDIO SANCHEZ: Universities have become ruthless in pursuing intellectual property, says Minsky. That's the issue here. Corporate-sponsored research on university campuses has doubled since 1988, precisely because companies are guaranteed protection, exclusive access, and rights to new technologies or medical breakthroughs. @PGPH The problem, says law professor Jerome Rikeman [sp], an expert on intellectual property law at Vanderbilt University, is that universities have been sloppy in clarifying the murky contractual and legal agreements that universities enter into with corporate sponsors, and that's because institutions are under a lot of pressure to come up with more and more private funding for research. JEROME RIKEMAN, Professor of Law, Vanderbilt University: Universities have a very serious problem. They risk a brain drain if their academics are not suitably remunerated for their creative inventions, and they're starving for basic research. The government, which used to fully fund basic research in this country until the 1980s, has cut back so far that basic research, it is drying up, so the university is saying, "We have to be self-funders of our- of our own basic research. If it turns out to have a commercial application, everybody's going to make money on it. We should get our share because we helped to develop that, and with that money we can fund the department, we can fund the inventors, we can fund those places in the university that need basic research and continue our mission." CLAUDIO SANCHEZ: But has this relationship had a corrupting influence on that academic mission? Well, some experts in this field of intellectual property rights contacted for this story say yes, but almost as many say no. Everyone does agree though that the U.S. government, or some federal agency, should be doing more to protect people like Peter Taborsky. PETER TABORSKY: I'm seeking justice and seeking the truth. What actually happened? What were the contracts for? Where did the money go? And those sort of things. Those things will vindicate me. They will show that I did nothing wrong, that I- that the notebooks were mine and the work was mine. CLAUDIO SANCHEZ: Taborsky's turned down a pardon offered by Governor Lawton Chiles because he says accepting a pardon would mean admitting he's guilty. Taborsky is scheduled to be released from prison on April 3, 1997, and begin 11 1/2 years probation.@PGPH I'm Claudio Sanchez reporting. [This program has been professionally transcribed by Journal Graphics. JG has used its best efforts to assure the transcript accurately reflects NPR's original broadcast, but makes no guarantees or representations that the transcription is identical to the original NPR broadcast. The official record of an NPR broadcast is the audio tape of the original broadcast.] The preceding text has been professionally transcribed. 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