Answer
Check the sponsorship agreement. The terms of such agreements can vary from
one project to the next. The representatives of the dental hygiene program
and the dental products company certainly would have addressed ownership of
patents and other intellectual property in their agreement, however, so the
agreement will dictate who owns and who may use the intellectual property.
In any event, it is not likely that the professor or his research assistants
have any ownership in the discovery. Under the terms of most sponsorship agreements,
the researchers are hired under a "work for hire" arrangement and must agree
to sign over all rights to intellectual property they develop while working
on the project (whether the intellectual property ultimately developed was
specifically delineated in the contract or not).
