Intellectual Property Theft

We've all been there. You go to your advisor with a great idea for your a class you want to design and teach, a research project, even a thesis. Your advisor questions you day in and day out. You "defend" your idea with examples from your rigorous prior literature review, data, and prior experience. Your advisor discourages you from doing your proposed idea, but you keep going, sure of its value. Next thing you know, your advisor announces their own version of your class, research project, or thesis. And you aren't given a single crumb of credit.

"As she looked over the highlighted parts of each paper that indicated similar content, she said that this was the most egregious thing she’d ever seen a professor do to a graduate student." - Allison Harbin

How to Prevent Intellectual Property Theft

Copyright your work.

1. Your work is Copyright protected once it is in fixed form, but you can add the following text as an extra layer of protection.

   1. The copyright symbol © or the word "Copyright"

   2. The year of first publication

   3. The name of the copyright owner

   4. A statement of rights, such as "All Rights Reserved"

2. Consider registering your work with a copyright office or uploading it to an open-access repository that publicly timestamps and proves your authorship.

Keep records of your work in a Google Document

Track all meetings regarding your work.

How this formula helps

Articles

• Coercion of Grads, and Now IP Theft?

• When a Mentor Becomes a Thief

• Please Don't Steal My Work

• Exclusive: Prof plagiarized postdoc’s work in now-retracted paper, university found

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