Responding to the question about the departing PI whose data was considered intellectual property -

I think I can provide an opinion regarding this issue since I have a Ph.D. in environmental economics (land use) that involved use of a geographic information system to manipulate and create data.  If, for example, your faculty member created new information, such as by combining locational information with political data to generate maps of voting patterns, the resulting database would certainly be intellectual property.  The next question is whether your university has an intellectual property policy that would indicate whether ownership resides with the faculty member or with the university.

In the absence of any policy, the question for administrators is whether they would ever try to sell the database to anyone, or use it in their marketing as a proprietary product only available to students and researchers at that institution.  If it's not something they would use in courses or use to attract other researchers, and if it has no market value, it would make sense to allow the faculty member to take it with him so that he can do further research.  There's no point in having a fight over something that only has value to one person.

I think you need professional advice from two sources:  the person at your school who handles intellectual property issues (maybe university legal counsel or tech transfer office) and a person in the academic field of your faculty member (perhaps the department head, or the department head can possibly identify an appropriate contact).

Good luck!
Landy

__________________________
Landy C. Johnson, MPA, Ph.D.
Director of Grant Development
Assumption College, Alumni Hall 024
500 Salisbury St.
Worcester, MA  01609-1296
(508)767-7666
xxxxxx@assumption.edu
http://www.assumption.edu/research

======================================================================
 Instructions on how to use the RESADM-L Mailing List, including
 subscription information and a web-searchable archive, are available
 via our web site at http://www.hrinet.org (click on "Listserv Lists")
======================================================================