Intellectual Property--Confidentiality while on the market

Notes from an exchange with our (terrific) Research Integrity Officer

Here's the issue, as described by a postdoc: "My PI found out that I did an informational interview with a company, and got mad that I talked about my project without his permission. Is this an unreasonable expectation on his part? I don’t know how I’m going to find a job if I can’t talk about my own research.”

Answer:

The person is absolutely right, if you can’t talk about your research, you can’t really expect to get a job!

Discussion of content already in the public domain (including published research and abstracts, presentations, open access data sets, codes, etc.) are generally fine to talk about with potential employers without issue.

There are field specific practices, but in general talking about a project with a company without vetting it with the PI isn’t a great practice. For, certain research is subject to confidentiality or non-disclosure agreements. Disclosure of certain research findings or methods may be subject to terms of the grant or financial support provided for the work. So, a postdoc should never put themselves in the position of violating the terms of the funding or agreements by disclosing something as part of the interview.

This isn’t an infrequent issue, as people don’t always share with their PIs that they are keen to leave the lab or are interviewing elsewhere… it usually isn’t a big deal and the person who makes the disclosure doesn’t get in trouble, but they can. I would discourage the practice of disclosure without explicit approval.

Focus on what is published or in the public domain and do not discuss what isn’t. It's okay to speak generally to say “we have extended this work, it will be in a forthcoming publication, I can’t share more than this but would be excited to discuss more once it’s published” or something like that…