It's really not about winning or losing, it's to show that good ideas, sometimes REALLY good ideas are stifled in an academic environment. And to show that the Professors who have obscene amounts of power in college don't use it responsibly. Why give them so much power over students if they won't wield it with the public interest in mind? Especially at a public university? How could a Professor not see the potential of this idea? The student tried the limited amount of recourse he had at his disposal, and eventually gave up, and pursued the project on his own time, lucky for us.
And sometimes good ideas, really good ideas, get stifled by <significant others, bosses, industries, societies, etc...>. Reward is in the success, going back to gloat just makes you look like an ass and doesn't teach anyone anything, except maybe that you are a major dick. Was the professor in the wrong? Maybe, we have a very one sided story here, not the facts, but the facts as seen through the lens of one of the participants, one exhibiting enough childishness to make me seriously doubt their telling in which they were akin to Ghandi fighting the oppressive British Empire.
