Reading comp PrepTest 116 · Section 1 · Question 27

Topic: Legal Studies

Paragraph 1

• Paragraph note
  • Two groups are introduced; A question about their relationship
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
  • Institutions - Want to exploit faculty research commercially
  • Faculty researchers - Contracts with private firms/want to become entrepreneurs
  • Question - What’s the appropriate way to set up the relationship between researchers, universities, and the IP developed?

Paragraph 2

• Paragraph note
  • Patricia Chew - Four approaches - Three explored
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
  • 1) Supramaximalist - Institution owns everything the researcher does
  • 2) Maximalist - Institution owns everything except what the researcher does without institution resources or on their time
  • 3) Resource-provider - Institution owns anything made with “significant use” of their resources
    • Question - What constitutes “significant use”?
  • (Where’s the 4th approach?)

Paragraph 3

• Paragraph note
  • Anomaly presented/Issues with institution-focused approaches
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
  • Three approaches assume institution owns unless they are generous
  • Common law - Researcher owns research
  • IP ownership in these cases is unsettled; most universities maximize their ownership

Paragraph 4

• Paragraph note
  • Fourth way
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
  • Author - 4th way free from issues
  • 4) Faculty-oriented - Faculty owns except for public health or predefined substantial institution involvement
  • Difference - Focused on faculty ownership, not institution ownership

Main Point: The legal question of ownership of faculty-derived IP is unsettled, but most universities approach it from a position of maximizing their ownership, while another approach focuses on ownership by the faculty that develop it, which is free of the legal questions raised by the institution-focused approaches.

Lines 19-24 - The central question of the passage

Lines 25-27 - Four answers to the question are introduced

Line 27 - The first answer

Line 33 - A second answer

Line 40 - A third answer

Lines 46-50 - A problem/anomaly with these three approaches

Line 60 - A fourth answer that doesn’t have these problems

Question/Answer - Paragraph 1 introduces two groups that have interests at odds with each other - faculty researchers and universities. Based on this relationship, the Author poses a question as to how best to structure the relationship as far as intellectual property generated by the faculty is concerned (Lines 19-24), as universities risk losing the best researchers to their commercial interests (Lines 15-19). The key focus, according to the Author, is the “appropriate level of flexibility” (Lines 23-24). When a question such as this is posed, the Author’s answer - or her opinion on a key answer - is generally the main point. Here, the Author presents four answers to the question, in the form of four approaches to this relationship. They’re all previewed in Line 26, but they’re split up between three in Paragraph 2 and one in Paragraph 4, highlighting that fourth one as different. What’s the key difference? The ones in Paragraph 2 all focus on maximizing institutional ownership (Lines 56-58), which is at odds with common law (Lines 49-50). The answer in Paragraph 4, on the other hand, “seems to be free” from that issue of being contrary to common law, and it focuses on researcher ownership. While the Author doesn’t fully endorse that approach, she’s certainly more positive on it than the others in that she highlights it’s free of key issues, so the main point should reflect that, as in our summary above.

List - A list of answers to the key question is introduced in Line 26 (“fourfold classification”), and that list is then explored through Paragraphs 2 and 4. Since we already addressed these answers in the Question/Answer Meta-Structure, we won’t dive into them again here.

Paradox - Paragraph 3 is focused on a paradox (“anomaly”). The current practice at “most major institutions” (Line 56) is an anomaly, since they focus on maximizing institutional ownership when common law says that researchers own their inventions. In passages that focus on a paradox, the Author’s resolution is generally the main point. This passage, however, doesn’t focus on this paradox. However, the answer provided to the central question in Paragraph 4 is said to be free of “these particular issues” - in other words, it doesn’t fall into the anomaly the other three answers do - so the correct answer in the main point question might reflect this Meta-Structure. In any case, we should expect a question or two about it.

After reading through Paragraph 2, you should have noticed that the fourth of the “fourfold classification” was missing. This should have suggested a couple things. First, another paragraph will be dedicated to discussing that classification/approach. Second, that approach must be fundamentally different in some way to justify splitting it off from these three. As such, we should have read to find where that fourth approach showed up and then identified what made it stand apart from the other three.