Inventor mobility undermined by university ownership of patent

[Brenda M. "Preserving the Fruits of Labor: Impediments to University Inventor Mobility," Tennessee Law Review 89, no. 1 (Fall 2021): 1-66 heinonline gdi-tm]

Universities have generally tolerated inventor movement between institutions.1 Recently, some universities have been reluctant to allow departing inventors to continue building on their work.2 Directly or indirectly, they inhibit inventor mobility. I have coined the term "innovation-essential components" to describe university ownership of a set of resources-such as data, patents, trade secrets, grants, industry contracts, materials, and inventor laboratory notebooks­ that bind inventors to their institutions, making departure exceedingly difficult without the parent university's blessing. Universities have further complicated inventor mobility by entering into "no poach" agreements that raise very serious antitrust concerns or by engaging in questionable practices in the process of "poaching" an inventor.s