INTELLECTUAL CHAIN GANG

Petr Taborsky doesn't fit the part of a hardened convict. Born into a Czech family that immigrated to the U.S. when he was six, he is articulate and soft-spoken, an idealistic 34-year-old science nerd who hopes someday to conduct cancer research. He is also principled and somewhat stubborn--so stubborn, in fact, that the state of Florida put him on a chain gang last year, and now holds him in a minimum-security facility.

His crime? In a case with widespread implications for universities increasingly dependent on corporate research grants, he was jailed for "stealing" his own notebooks and ideas and then refusing...