Can I use university provided laptop for working on my own startup?
I was given a laptop from the University where I am currently working towards my PhD. My professor approved a laptop for me from his available funds. The co-ordinator of the lab ordered it from Apples's website and it was first vetted and secured by the IT staff of the department. I am currently in my 3rd year and I came up with a product idea, unrelated to my dissertation. I am working on the idea using my university laptop, will that be an issue in the future, especially if I start full-time on my product (in case it works out).
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[ 12.9 ms ] story [ 104 ms ] threadWho owns the laptop? Since you didn't pay for it, and it has been "secured" by someone else, you might find that they could take it back or wipe it remotely at any time.
Why not obtain your own dedicated hardware for your project?
If you didn't I would not worry too much about it.
To get in trouble you would have to execute your idea and turn it into a business that is worth going to court or arbitration for (with very little chances of winning).
Chances of that happening are so slim that you should worry about many other things first.
For piece of mind you can host a virtual machine and work there.
Keep in mind that usually if IT wants they can monitor every keystroke on your laptop, so there's really no privacy when working on a computer provided and managed by others.
As a discussion point, is there any industry where if provided tools, ownership of anything those tools produce become owned (either partially or fully) by the legal owners of those tools? Would the same rules apply to paintbrushes or a musical instrument?
Assuming there's not, it just seems odd that it would be the case for a laptop and somehow that's okay.
This isn't across the board, and different institutions have completely different approaches, but certainly in some countries there may be terms contained in PhD funding project. In some countries, a PhD studentship is treated formally as a fixed term employment with contract. In others it isn't. It's worth checking if they have any claim to ideas you create while working on your PhD, as you might want to be very careful to stop having ideas for a while if that was the case...
That the topic is unrelated to your dissertation may not be relevant if there is such a clause, but you should probably check this out, in addition to considering the "acceptable IT use" agreement or whatever your institution has in place, to see if they disallow use for personal business.
Definitely make sure you understand your university's policy toward student work, companies, and inventions, and how rights are divided if at all between university, students, and faculty.
Using university resources would likely give them an even stronger claim of ownership. They could even sue you later.
While I was a postdoc I consulted for the company I used to work for sometimes. I agreed it with the University IP office and they were happy under the proviso that no institutional resources were used and it didn't affect my work any more than I declared it would.
So technically are you allowed to? The short answer is probably not with a provided machine, but you could check with your university IP people - they exist. On the other hand lots of universities run entrepreneur programs for grad students so it would be hard to see how they'd complain if you used a university supplied machine for that. They might expect a cut if you do though. In theory most universities have all sorts or rules about releasing open source software too, but I don't know anyone who's ever really followed those.
I really doubt the IT department secured and vetted a Mac. Most likely they inventoried it and gave it a sticker. If in doubt install Little Snitch and see if it phones home, but unless you're using the institution VPN I doubt they can track anything. Unlike Windows where you may have to use an institutional sign in, I think it would be obvious if such a system was on your laptop.
If you drop out of school to pursue it then they're going to ask for the laptop back at least.
The practical answer is I doubt they would know, check or even consider pursuing anything unless you really made bank. And at that point you can afford a legal team.
The only reasonably "safe" approach is to buy your own PC, only work on your idea off campus and not publish, publicize or otherwise promote your work until after you graduate with your PhD. Keep a diary of your actual work, etc to be able to demonstrate that you did not utilize any of the universities resources for your project and that the essential IP is unrelated to your PhD research work.
I earned my PhD a few years ago and along the way I saw some of my colleagues get tripped up by the most specious academic rules. Cutting corners is not worth it.
In some cases, use of university equipment (the laptop) will make them want to come looking for money later. The use of the laptop might not even matter, with some employers the contract might permit them IP ownership of something you create even if it's entirely on your own time and entirely without employer resources.
I'd suggest you see if you can take your contract of employment, in particular any bit about an IP assignment, to a lawyer for advice. If your university has a student's union, they might have some lawyers that can give you free (or cheap) advice. You could also just ask the university directly, but that has the risk of causing more trouble than it's worth.
You don't mention it but I got to ask: If tomorrow the SSD in the university laptop fries and all data is lost, how long time until you are up to speed again?
Technically they know everything. There are hardware level enrollments supported by both macOS and Windows, agent software will be installed automatically and all files and browsers history are monitored.
Buy your own laptop.
From IP side, it much more complex. In my university there are numerous start-ups which got IP waivers - you can ask organization IP lawyer about your problem - but i bet his/her answer will be something along lines: need faculty head approval or something like that (obvious, decision is influenced by how much worth they see). But even with waivers and if startup is lucky enough there is chance that somebody will be 'bright' enough to try sue you on that waiver even it lost cause from beginning.
This is to make it easier for both you and the university.
Google Larry page still has his paper for the page rank algorithm patented and owned by Stanford. The patent expired now.
So your great work is owned by the university. The only reason google is not owned by the university is because it was formed after the founders left. The product they made while they were in the university was called backrub.