Professor seeking to sell independently created software [closed]

Question

I am a public-sector university teacher in Brazil. For the last few years, I have been independently working on teaching software, which I firmly believe has excellent commercial value in academia and outside the broader public of school teachers.

This software has not originated directly from my research. Still, mostly from my teaching expertise, I have chosen not to publish anything about it nor use any funding or university resources. It has been entirely developed in my free time with lots of personal sacrifices and money invested.

My university does not enforce a strict policy on intellectual property, nor do I have any interest in licensing this, as it is a very personal approach to some specific pedagogy questions in my field. I would instead explore this idea independently as an indie developer selling individual user licenses directly to end-users through digital marketplaces/app stores while maintaining my complete duties at university.

Regardless of my country's legislation and university policies, how do you feel about this situation? Is it standard/acceptable in your country/university? Am I at risk here?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Answer 1

This situation is probably not all that different from cases where an academic creates a textbook to use as a teaching tool and sells it independently for profit. In many cases the academic even assigns their own text in courses and teaches from this, creating a revenue stream for textbook sales from their teaching. That activity is generally considered to be an acceptable part of academic teaching. The only time it raises ethical issues is if there is cause to believe that the academic is assigning inappropriate teaching materials in courses for the purpose of exogenous gain.

For the legal side of your proposal, you should speak directly to the university lawyer or hire your own lawyer. There may be IP issues you need to consider and possibly other legal issues.