What happens in the case of a student working in a hospital-based department?
In the absence of any internal, hospital policy in relation to student intellectual property, or an agreement with an external organisations relating to the student’s research project, the student would own the intellectual property they created. I have funds from several sources, some commercial, some not. Commercial funds have been used to buy equipment and resources that are also used on the non-commercial projects. Would the commercial sponsor have intellectual property rights to projects that have simply used some equipment or resources? In principle, no, although it will very much depend on the terms of the commercial contract. Equipment purchased through a commercial research project would normally be retained by the University for general use. The terms of the commercial contract would need to be reviewed to give a definitive answer in this case.
