Shady companies have long given unscrupulous scientists the opportunity to buy authorship of papers—a form of academic fraud. But according to a draft paper posted online today and scheduled to appear in the International Journal for Educational Integrity, these outfits have now diversified into selling intellectual property rights, too.
Over the past 2 years, these firms have registered thousands of bizarre designs for medical equipment and other devices with the U.K.’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO), listing scientists as the owners of the designs for a fee. The companies target researchers in countries including India and Pakistan, where universities reward researchers who patent inventions with career advancement and sometimes bonuses.
The finding is “bonkers” says Emily Hudson, an intellectual property academic at the University of Oxford who was not involved with the research. The practice exploits ignorance about intellectual property systems, she says: The U.K., like many countries, allows artists and others to protect their designs relatively cheaply and easily, without the arduous and expensive process of obtaining a formal patent. It is these design registrations, not patents, that companies are selling.
Northwestern University metascientist Reese Richardson and his colleagues made the discovery while monitoring social media channels used by paper mills to advertise fraudulent academic products for sale, including journal publications, student essays, and theses. About 2 years ago, the team started noticing adverts for a new kind of product: so-called U.K. design patents, with “inventorship” slots being sold for 2000 to 30,000 Indian rupees ($23 to $398). The adverts emphasize that a “patent filing” can give researchers a boost in the ranking systems used in India.
The researchers matched up more than 20 of these adverts with design registrations filed with the U.K. IPO. The two companies responsible for these registrations had filed almost 2000 more, the team found: mostly “childish” designs, Richardson says, with images often cribbed from repositories of 3D drawings, and titles invoking buzzwords such as “AI-powered” or “machine learning.”
The often absurd designs included everything from agricultural machinery to electrical equipment, but medical devices were the most common. One design, for instance, shows a shoe with what appears to be a camera and USB ports around the sole, titled “Smart shoe for visually impaired.” Another is titled “Designing an Artificial Intelligence Powered Skin Cancer Inspection Device with Design Thinking” and is a 3D drawing of a Glock pistol with the addition of a small screen and USB ports. “I was hooting and hollering when I saw that one,” Richardson says.
By further scouring the database of design registrations, the researchers identified an additional six suspicious companies. These firms were relatively new, with a limited web presence, and filed designs with flowery titles and high numbers of applicants. Together, these companies have registered more than 3000 designs in the past 2 years, representing 3.3% of all designs registered in the U.K. in that period.
The discovery “blew my mind when I heard about it,” says Sarah Fackrell, an intellectual property law researcher at the Chicago-Kent College of Law who contributed legal expertise to the paper: “Getting IP rights in order to commit academic fraud or misconduct is new to me.”
Almost all the owners listed on the registrations found by the researchers were academics or universities in India.
Indian universities allocate points to employees for products such as journal papers and patents, and employees must reach a minimum number of points in order to pass annual reviews, says Achal Agarwal, the founder of the research integrity organization India Research Watch. A ministry body that regulates and funds universities suggests researchers should get more points for international than local patents, although institutions differ in how closely they follow these recommendations, Agarwal says. But design registrations are not equivalent to patents, Fackrell notes, and the scheme uncovered in the new paper would not work if universities properly discriminated between the two.
The companies found by Richardson and his colleagues may be serving academics in India, but similar exploitation happens elsewhere, says Anna Abalkina, a paper mill researcher at the Free University of Berlin who was not involved in the research. Russian universities similarly incentivize patents, along with journal papers and other products, and companies advertise patent inventorship on social media—including the Russian equivalent of Craigslist, she says.
The exploitation is concerning for a few reasons, Fackrell says: Flooding the register with “garbage” could make it more difficult for good-faith applicants to check whether their design is new, and could raise questions about the legitimacy of the IP system.
But this doesn’t necessarily mean the U.K. IPO should make it more onerous or expensive to register designs, Hudson says. That could hurt legitimate designers—the lack of oversight in the system “is a feature, not a bug,” Hudson adds.
In an email to Science, a spokesperson for the U.K. IPO said designs, like other intellectual property, can legitimately be bought and sold, and that “it would not be appropriate for the IPO to comment on arrangements in other jurisdictions relating to academic recognition.”
Indian institutions could help reduce the incentives for IP fraud by assessing researchers on the quality, not quantity, of their output, Agarwal says. The corruption is harming India’s reputation, he adds. “The only way this reputation can be improved is by calling it out … and India taking action.”
