The management of university-generated intellectual property is complex and carries significant consequences for those involved in direct negotiations (faculty inventors, companies, university administrators, attorneys, and invention-management agents) as well as those who may be affected (competing companies, the public, patients, and the wider research community). Whether ownership of a particular invention resides with the inventors or is assigned by the inventors to a university technology-transfer office, a university-affiliated foundation, or an independent invention-management agency, it is essential that all those involved recognize the distinctive role that inventions arising out of scholarly research should have. Faculty investigators and inventors, together with university administrators, must communicate this role and hold those involved accountable when they are engaged in the development and deployment of patent rights. A subcommittee of the American Association of University Professors' Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure prepared the "Statement on Intellectual Property," which was approved by Committee A and adopted by the Association's Council in November 2013. This document explains that the fundamental rights of faculty members to direct and control their own research do not terminate when they make an invention or other research discovery; these rights properly extend to decisions involving invention management, intellectual property licensing, commercialization, dissemination, and public use. Faculty inventor "assignment" of an invention to a management agent, including the university that hosted the underlying research, should be voluntary and negotiated, rather than mandatory, unless federal statutes or previous sponsored-research agreements dictate otherwise.