By: Corbett Gildersleve, News Writer

Earlier this year, SFU released an updated version of their Intellectual Property (IP) Policy for community feedback. The Teaching Support Staff Union (TSSU) released a public petition on March 14, stating that, among other things, the new policy would “see the university steal the IP of teachers, researchers, and students across the university, without our consent.”

The current policy, approved in 2004, defines that IP is “the result of intellectual or artistic activity, created by a university member in a scholarly, professional, or student capacity, that can be owned by a person.” It goes on to state that this kind of activity can include “inventions, publications (including scholarly publications), educational materials, computer software, works of art, industrial and artistic designs, as well as other intellectual property rights.” This includes copyrights, trademarks, and patents.

After the draft policy was posted online, TSSU provided their concerns to SFU directly and later launched the petition. Sometime afterward, SFU’s draft was removed from their website, and an FAQ response was put up on April 10. SFU cited that the policy is over 20 years old and they aim to amend it to “enhance innovation, creativity, and transparency in research and innovation.” 

In the current policy, SFU notes it “retains a royalty-free perpetual right to use for scholarly, academic, and other non-commercial purposes all IP created through use of university resources.” According to the new proposal, a commercial purpose would involve a third party and could involve “assignment, licensing, manufacturing or production of IP” as well as creating a separate company. While the new policy states that educational material belongs to the creator, SFU also added a clause stating they receive a royalty-free non-commercial license. 

The Peak spoke with Kayla Hilstob, chief steward, and Derek Sahota, member representative, to discuss their concerns around section 5.1.1a of the draft policy. “The new policy proposal says anything arising from employment duties is SFU’s, and that’s a very, very broad capture. It doesn’t even mean you actually do it as part of your employment duties, it just arises from,” said Sahota.

“The new policy proposal says anything arising from employment duties is SFU’s, and that’s a very, very broad capture. It doesn’t even mean you do it as part of your employment duties, it just arises from.” — Derek Sahota, member representative, TSSU

Comparing the current policy with the proposed changes, details have been reduced. The Peak reached out to SFU for a statement, and was directed to their Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page. In question four of the FAQ, SFU responds to concerns about IP ownership by stating that it gains the IP rights to anything developed under employment duties, but that “faculty retain full ownership of their creations outside of university-assigned work.” The FAQ lists a few examples, such as “brochures, commissioned studies, or descriptive handbooks, whose production was commissioned by the university,” though voided from the new draft. As such, TSSU raised concerns as to whether course material created by an instructor today would be used by SFU in the future after that person has moved on. In 2021, at Concordia University, a student took a course overseen by one instructor and two TAs, only to find out the course videos they were watching were created, recorded, and presented by an instructor who had passed away two years prior. 

When asked about the benefits of SFU’s current IP policy, Sahota said, “Giving [workers] control over their own IP allows for the greatest amount of innovation, development, collaboration, and the best resources. It’s a grassroots model of those workers, whether they’re faculty, researchers, students together, not a corporate model of ownership from the top-down directing everything.

“That is different, but it’s what’s made universities so successful across the world — to become these developers of knowledge, developers of places of education, places of learning. And so it is different, it has worked at SFU for decades,” he continued. The current policy stresses the responsibilities of the university to provide safeguards for the equitable protection and distribution of property, collaboration, and fairness. Sahota stated that “the existing policy and SFU’s model of IP is it’s really egalitarian, that reflects the radical roots of the university. It applies to all, whether you’re a student, or you’re a faculty, staff, you’re precarious, or continuing, you get these rights.”

With the change in SFU’s IP policy concerning different groups at SFU, Sahota noted, “This process is completely and fundamentally flawed” by not directly involving TSSU, the Faculty Association of SFU, and others in developing the changes. “The changes that are being made to policy should be coming from us, not be directed at us. This policy change isn’t addressing a need that the community has found, and that should be the start of the policy process,” he said.

When asked what TSSU’s next steps were, Sahota said the petition has been submitted to senior administration, and SFU has paused the update to the policy. TSSU wants to “build pressure and momentum” to ensure that if the policy is brought back, the community is “aware and prepared to make sure the policy meets the demands of workers, meets the needs of the university and doesn’t have this corporatization built into it.”