Our second semester group project is to bid for, develop, and attempt to "sell" a software solution. Local companies are the customer that provide the brief, and that we attempt to "sell" to.
I was under the impression until recently these were dummy projects, something the company already has so that our projects can be compared to their own as an additional method of measuring how well we did.
However, it turns out this is not the case, with one project going as far to say in the brief;
"CompanyX would be interesting in commercialising any suitable finished products, or projects that could easily be finished to industry standards."
So essentially we're required to work for free. Is this legal (in the UK)? I've heard a bit about anything created for Uni work being the Uni's IP, does that come into this at all?