The group of faculty and administrators split into three subcommittees; one dealing with the academic uses of information technology in teaching and research, another focusing on partnerships with industry, and a third devoted solely to intellectual property.

The latter two committees, Wald says, realized that they had to deal with the underlying "big issue" of how Harvard itself uses its name before tacking the issues they were assigned to resolve.

"Inevitably, when you get into intellectual property rights, one of the features of intellectual property is the use of the Harvard name," President Neil L. Rudenstine explains.

The issue becomes more complex with the increase in different kinds of multimedia ventures.

"We know what to do with a book--you write the book, you get the royalties. But it's not clear what you do with a CD-ROM, or you decide to broadcast your lectures or your course. Whose property is that? Is it the University's because we pay the salary?" he says.

The UCIT developed a draft of the use of name policy last summer and circulated them among faculty and administrators in the fall. The Corporation, Harvard's governing body, formally enacted the proposals by vote on Feb. 9.

Hitching a Free Ride

Philosophical concerns aside, the new policy also seeks to counteract the tendency of Harvard faculty, students and staff to use the marketability of Harvard's name to highlight individual or departmental projects.

"It has become clear that more and more people are wanting to use Harvard name to get attention," Thompson says. "It gets more attention than it has before."

Wald agrees. "Attaching the name to an internal project can make it more valuable," she says.

One area of particular interest, says Fineberg, has been using Harvard's name to label research projects. More often than not, the policy does not allow a departmental project to call itself a "Harvard Project," but permits the project to identify itself with its school if the dean approves.

"The issue there is where the project is based," he says.

For example, researchers at the Harvard School of Education recently began a study of tenure practices in higher education called the "Harvard Project on Tenure." University officials, says Thompson son, thought the name was quite misleading.

"You'd think it would be on internal tenure," he says, nothing that the findings of the study would appear to the outside world to be an official Harvard statement on tenure policies.

The researchers were asked to rename the project. They did so voluntarily.

In deciding whether 'to authorize the use of the name 'Harvard University,' University officials will look at whether the project or work represents an individual, a specific research group, an entire department, or the University as a whole--as well as whether the University wants to express, "some sort of institutional endorsement," Wald says.