## Facts

- Gerald Biby worked as a technology transfer coordinator at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Industrial Agricultural Products Center (IAPC), assisting with commercialization of university technologies through the Office of Technology Transfer.
- Biby and two other university employees helped develop a horticultural application involving polylactic acid (PLA).
- The university maintained an intellectual-property policy addressing employee inventions and royalty sharing, including a minimum inventor share of net royalties if the university accepted and pursued patenting.
- The university licensed a modified version of the PLA technology to Corn Card International; a dispute arose concerning license assignment rights and proceeded to arbitration.
- In the arbitration, the university agreed to produce relevant documents and sought access to Biby’s paper files and office computer to locate responsive materials.
- The university’s computer-use policy stated users could expect files to be private, but expressly reserved the university’s right to access computer information for specified purposes, including responding to legal requests for documents in litigation or similar legal actions.
- Biby refused consent to a computer search; the university notified him it would search the computer without consent for litigation-related files, and Biby ultimately participated.
- The search used terms connected to the arbitration and licensing dispute and produced documents that contributed to the university’s decision to terminate Biby for misconduct related to the dispute.
- Biby claimed the university’s handling of the PLA license deprived him of royalty income he believed he was owed.

## Issues

1. Whether Biby had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his workplace computer files given the university policy and the operational realities of public employment.
2. If a privacy interest existed, whether the university’s litigation-driven search of Biby’s workplace computer was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.
3. Whether Biby had a Fourteenth Amendment–protected property interest in PLA-related royalties sufficient to support a procedural due process claim.
4. Whether the individual university officials were entitled to qualified immunity on the computer-search claim.

## Decision

- The Eighth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for the defendants on all claims appealed.
- The court held Biby lacked an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in his office computer files under the university’s policy, which allowed access to respond to legal document requests.
- The court alternatively held that, even assuming a privacy interest, the search was reasonable in justification and scope because it targeted arbitration-related materials and terms.
- The court held Biby failed to establish a constitutionally protected property interest in royalty income based on the university policy and record presented.
- The court held the individual defendants were entitled to qualified immunity because the asserted Fourth Amendment right was not clearly established as applied to the limited, policy-authorized search.

## Legal Principles

- A public employee’s Fourth Amendment privacy expectations in a workplace computer are shaped by workplace realities and employer policies that reserve access rights.
- A workplace search by a public employer is constitutional when it is justified by legitimate work-related purposes and is reasonable in scope in light of that purpose.
- Qualified immunity shields individual officials unless existing law clearly establishes that the specific conduct violated the Constitution.
- A procedural due process claim requires a specific, legally enforceable entitlement; general royalty-sharing policies or expectations of future royalties do not, without more, create a protected property interest.

## Conclusion

The court upheld the university’s limited computer search conducted to satisfy arbitration-related document production, found no due-process property entitlement to asserted royalties on the record, and ruled that individual officials were protected by qualified immunity.


Biby v. Bd. of Regents of Univ. of Neb. at Lincoln, 419 F.3d 845 (8th Cir. 2005)