''One student said to me, 'If I learn nothing else, I am learning how to communicate,''' with professionals in other fields, says Margo Bagley, Associate Professor of Law for Intellectual Property and Contracts at Emory School of Law. She is the faculty member who oversees the TI:GER program.
The TI:GER program is the brainchild of Georgia Tech professor Marie Thursby, who sought to link Ph.D. students, MBA students, and law students in a collaborative venture. Thursby contacted faculty members at Emory Law to work in developing the program, says Bagley. The first TI:GER program students were recruited in spring 2002, and the program began that next fall. The first group of six law students in TI:GER graduated in spring 2004.
TI:GER participants are divided into teams, each with two law students, one Georgia Tech MBA student, and one Georgia Tech Ph.D. science student. One of the law students has an IP focus; the other has a business law focus. The Ph.D. student has an idea for an invention as part of his or her dissertation work. The challenge: the four students on each team need to come up with a plan on how to bring this invention to market.
Team plans are purely theoretical, says Bagley. The Ph.D. student may not actually develop the idea into an invention. Plus, Georgia Tech would have ownership, even if the invention did become a reality. The teams in the TI:GER program develop plans as though the Ph.D. student were an independent scientist and the idea was really in the works.
The practical side of the TI:GER program is that projects give the participating students the chance to actually do the real work by doing patent research or developing a commercialization plan.
TI:GER starts with Ph.D. students explaining their dissertation projects to the J.D. and MBA students. The Ph.D. students continue to develop their inventions as the program progresses. The MBA student needs to figure out what the market would be for this invention, and how it could be sold.
As for the law students, the business-track law student finds the best way to move forward on the business front—whether licensing the invention to another company is the best way to go or if launching a start-up company makes more sense, for example. The IP-track law student looks at whether the invention infringes on any existing patents, how to obtain a patent, and how to determine who owns the rights to it. And the whole team has to work together.
Having all their legal, business and science cogs clicking is not the only challenge for TI:GER program participants. Sometimes the teamwork provides a lesson in professional reality. One law student mentioned to Bagley that the science project was not as far along as he thought it would be, making it hard to search for similar or conflicting patents. Another came to Bagley saying that the other members of her team were not pulling their weights.
Bagley advised both students that these problems were examples of what could happen in their legal careers and that part of the challenge of the TI:GER program was to decide what to do in light of what others on the team are doing.
The program provides students with ''experiences that real lawyers are likely to have,'' says William J. Carney, the Charles Henry Candler Professor of Law at Emory. ''I'm very enthusiastic about the program,'' he adds. Carney, who has taught at Emory for 27 years, was involved in the program launch and selecting its first participants from the law school.
When selecting students for the program, first-year grades are key. Also, law students on the IP track need to have some technology or science background, says Carney. Law students on the business track need job experience and a demonstrated interest and ability in business law.
Faculty members are finding more and more students who say that they want to come to Emory Law because of the TI:GER program, ''and that's exciting!'' says Bagley.
Demand for places in the program is high, with only about half of applicants being accepted, says Bagley. And, even if some participants leave the program part-way through, no new students can be brought in to replace them. This is because the teams are set at the beginning of the two-year course, says Bagley, and newcomers would never be able to catch up on the collaborative work already done.
The most important thing the TI:GER program does, says Bagley, is it lets the students learn to appreciate the needs, expectations and knowledge of the science, business and law sides of any project in which they are themselves involved. For students, the program is ''expanding their minds and their viewpoints, and that's what education should do.''
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