Yes. The applicant holds the intellectual property rights, subject to
Knight Foundation’s requirement that the intellectual property be
shared with the world. By entering the contest you agree to share those
rights with the world in line with open-source, open-standard
philosophy. If you enter your idea as an “open” idea, others can
comment on it. They are freely giving you their wisdom, and by doing
that, they are agreeing to let you incorporate their ideas into your
project. If you win, however, under the open-source rules you’ll have
to share your software code and other know-how with everyone.