Creighton University

Interested in finding out more about these and other learning opportunities from IRM?

Contact Darlene Golden, dgolden@creighton.edu, 280-3651.

OMAHA, April 8, 2008 - Picture this.

You’re a biology professor, and you’ve photocopied a rare text which you’ve shared with your students.

In doing so, have you broken the law by reproducing copyrighted material?
All too frequently, university professors, researchers and staff contend with these and other difficult legal questions.

For example, can researchers use patented technologies in their laboratories? Or, what are researchers’ intellectual property rights when conducting collaborative research projects with investigators at other institutions?

To help Creighton staff understand the answers to these and other thorny questions, Intellectual Resources Management (IRM) hosted a special seminar on Mar. 25, 2008, titled “Fair use, research exemptions and collaborations: What you need to know for your classroom and laboratory.”

Attendees from a range of disciplines at Creighton took advantage of the free seminar, led by featured speaker Chuck Valauskas, a Chicago-based intellectual property attorney and founding partner of Valauskas & Pine. The seminar was held at Creighton in Criss II.

“As legal counsel who advises the University's faculty in their research activities, I appreciated Mr. Valauskas' clear and succinct discussion of the issues raised by faculty collaborations, including joint authorship and joint inventorship,” said, Debra Fiala, associate general counsel for regulatory affairs at Creighton.

In a related IRM-sponsored seminar on Mar. 27, Valauskas also addressed the changing landscape of patent and case law. Staff from Creighton, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, University of Nebraska Medical Center, the University of Nebraska System and University of South Dakota attended the event.  

“These recently enacted patent and case laws have had a big impact on the way you go about writing licensing agreements for research discoveries,” says Mary Ann Wendland, IRM associate director. “Chuck’s seminar provided valuable information to researchers on how to navigate these agreements so they can enjoy protections and advantages within the full letter of the law.”

IRM plans to hold similar seminars in the future.