The goal of the class is education. As a consequence of your educational endeavors, commercial activities might arise from your work. You will be working with groups that may be filing patents or otherwise involved with confidential information, intellectual property, and product development. The MIT Technology Licensing Office oversees any questions on these matters, and wants to stimulate the transfer of MIT technologies for the benefit of society.
Below are guidelines to consider when you participate in iTeams.
Confidentiality
You may come in contact with confidential information. The faculty PI (or others on the team) may tell you which information is confidential. Treating such information with care is vital to securing the intellectual property rights to the technology. Be aware of how you propagate confidential information when talking to potential customers or market experts. We generally advise against signing NDAs for participation in MIT classes. However, in the past we have brought projects from outside MIT, and the organization proposing the project has suggested signing an NDA. That’s unusual. Please do not pick a project with an NDA requirement if you are uncomfortable with this.
No Public Disclosure
Discussions in an MIT classroom or other MIT setting (with teammates and faculty) do not constitute a “public disclosure.” However, presentations where the public is invited or present must not include confidential information. As a rule of thumb, communications about a project that meet the following three criteria do not constitute a public disclosure: (1) the communication fulfills a purpose for the project, (2) the receiver of the information is aware of the sensitive nature of the information, and (3) you know who all the people are that received the information. When conducting interviews you will rarely need to share sensitive information—the best interviewers never feel the need to do so! In case of doubt, check with your PI or their TLO officer.
Assignment of Inventions
While you are working with the team, intellectual property (copyrights, inventions, trademarks, etc.) may be developed. Ownership of intellectual property is governed by MIT policy. If the research leading to an invention was supported by sponsored research funding or made significant use of MIT facilities and/or MIT-administered funds, then MIT owns the intellectual property.
No Implied Eligibility for Compensation or Equity Participation
Serving on an iTeam does not entitle you to get paid by or own stock in any company that might be created as a result of your work. There is nothing to prevent you from later seeking employment with the company; at that point, you may be compensated by the company for future work (but not your iTeams work). If MIT licenses a patent or copyright on which you are an inventor/author, you are entitled to receive a portion of the royalty and/or equity MIT receives from the licensee in accordance with MIT’s royalty distribution policy.
Copyright of Work-Product Produced During Class
You and your team have the right to own the copyright of various reports that you might author as part of your iTeams work. This material will be shared with the PI and LL. You also grant to MIT the right to distribute this copyrighted material within the academic community. You acknowledge that there may be good reason not to distribute this material. If your report discusses MIT-owned, non-publicly disclosed intellectual property, you agree to seek MIT’s permission before distributing the report or otherwise disclosing the information.
