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Why It Doesn't Pay To Go To College

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I'm not sure this incentive, for the aspiring inventor: the University of Missouri, in Columbia, made a claim against a couple of  students who developed a smart phone app in class. If it matters (and apparently to U of M, it did), the app kept track of nearby apartment vacancies.

University lawyers --once they saw it'd had a quarter of a million downloads-- said "Hey! you did that on our time and dime!"  Or, words to that effect.  "Bite me!," responded Tony Brown and his colleagues. Or , words to that effect.  The school wanted 2/3rds of Brown's profits.  But he stood fast. And believe it or not, he won.

But he ruined it for everybody who follows him: the University of Missouri, now has a policy that n ew  inventions that students come up with belong to the folks in the ivory tower. Watch for a future rash of second-rate products to be developed in class, with amazingly similar, but better-tuned versions created completely on the students' own time.

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