Are Universities Special?

Universities offer a space for development of ideas, exploration of basic research, and productive outlets for creation and invention. As such, they are key to the innovation environment within which intellectual property laws operate. Although scholarship has focused on universities as institutions counter to other institutions like markets and government, less attention has been paid to universities as organizations, a site for governance through detailed rules and commonly understood norms. When understood as an organization, universities display three overlapping, but distinct models: one of pure research, one of pure commercialization, and one of public purpose. These three models together define a multivalent view of the university. This Article examines the implications of this multivalent view of the university as organization to the issues of patent and copyright ownership, infringement, and enforcement. The multivalent model presented here provides a more robust and valuable approach to gauging the role of universities in promotion invention and innovation