They employ doctors and scientists and function just like a normal
private sector company would.
This postgraduate was not an employee of MIT; he works for NASA. MIT
merely provides the facility (for which the student and/or NASA /pays/,
in addition to tax funding), and as such the results of any of that
research should belong to those who actually funded it (NASA and the
taxpayers - i.e. everyone) ... not MIT exclusively. Certainly MIT should
not have been allowed to /patent/ those ideas merely because the student
was at MIT at the time. Indeed, IMHO /nobody/ should be allowed to
patent any ideas, since the exclusivity of patents is merely a euphemism
for legalised racketeering. But in this case in particular, if /anyone/
has the "right" to claim exclusivity, it certainly isn't MIT.
See Homer's reply. Educational institutions are not companies.
Students are not employees.
A post-grad may be classified as an employee of the grant provider, but
he certainly isn't an employee of the academic institution in which he
studies, and that institution certainly has no "right" to claim
"ownership" of a student's ideas. The law may provide that facility, but
in that case the law is wrong.
