Part A

Question:

Who is right?
How this situation can be positively resolved?

References:
Code III.10.a:
Engineers shall, whenever possible, name the person or persons who may be individually
responsible for designs, inventions, writings, or other accomplishments.

Code C20:
"He will take care that credit for engineering work is given to those to whom credit is properly
due."

Code R20:31:
"Whenever possible, he will name the person or persons who may be individually responsible for
designs, inventions, writings, or other accomplishments."

Discussion:
Basic to engineering ethics is providing due credit to the person who has done the work. The
Code of Ethics Code III.10.a states that Engineers shall, whenever possible, name the person or
persons who may be individually responsible for designs, inventions, writings, or other
accomplishments. Everyone who works on a project for a company is entitled to get due credit
for the work that he/she has done. The case represents a similar problem of due credit not being
given to one of the members of the research team. It is evident from the case described that this
is a joint collaboration between the company and the team of researchers from the university.
Both teams have worked in tandem to develop the project and make it successful. It was agreed
that the intellectual property rights of any inventions developed will belong to the company. The
project manager has named himself as the leading innovator on the patent application while the
leader of the university team has played a significant part in the project and has not been named
as the lead innovator. It is seen that the senior professor has not been given the due credit for the
project as his team was behind the idea of developing the device; this has led to violation of
Code III.10.a. The facts also state another case where the name of one of the researcher has not

been included in the patent application as a contributor to the project as she had joined the
project when it was already underway. The facts do not make it clear whether the person has
made a significant contribution to the project or not. If she has made a significant contribution to
the project and her name has not been included as she had joined late then this leads to direct
violation of Code C20 and Code R20:31.

Conclusion:
It can be observed from the above described facts that the project manager acted unethically in
not giving due credit to the senior associate and naming himself as the sole lead innovator. For
an inventor to be fairly included their contribution should be an essential part needed to pass the
innovation test. Anyone else is getting a free ride. It has also been observed by referring various
patent cases that listing additional people as inventors in a patent who were not importantly
involved as inventors can weaken the legal defense of the patent should it ever arise. So the
project manager could be right on his part, but if she has made a significant contribution to the
project than she could file a case to get her contribution to the invention recognized.

How this situation can be positively resolved?

The first step to resolve the situation is of giving due credit to the senior associate and
naming him as the co-leading innovator of the project. As Arnold H. Glasow says A
good leader takes a little more than his share of blame, a little less than his share of the
credit the project should follow this saying.
The second issue of naming another associate on the contributor list can be addressed by
including her name but if consensus is not achieved than the associate could be rewarded
via giving her a bonus, rewarding her work on the project.

Part B
Innovation can be defined as the process of challenging the mainstream approach. A successful
innovation is one which creates value for the customer. Hence its important to understand *what*
one's objectives are with innovation. Long term effects in particular can be a majorly dangerous
aspect of innovation. There are various innovations whose long term effect is unknown as in the
case of Genetically Modified crops, no one knows what the long terms effect would be.
Innovation leads to experimentation and you need a set of rules which need to be followed for
carrying out risk free experiments. This is where the licensing bodies play an important part, it
acts as a watchdog. It helps in laying out the rules for the experiments. Also the licensing bodies

help to maintain a standard of the product/project. They help to train engineers on the standards
which need to be maintained and the precautions that one needs to take while executing a project.
Though the licensing body acts in curbing the innovation, but it is a necessity of the current time.