Posts Tagged: "Bayh-Dole"

The Future is in Our Hands; No Room in the U.S. for Second Best

A reliable and predictable patent law is more necessary than ever, for technology is a much larger part of our industrial product than ever. The recent Supreme Court attention to patent cases reflects their importance to the nation. The balances are not simple, the fresh balances among creativity, business risk, competition, trade, the creation of new knowledge, the production of industrial capital, and fairness, justice. There is no room in the United States for second best. You and we, lawyers and judges, share this responsibility.

Universities: Fallen Angels or Stewards of Bayh-Dole?

University discoveries are recognized as critical national assets because Bayh-Dole gave academic institutions the ability to own and manage inventions made with federal funding. The law helped lift the economy out of the doldrums of the 1970’s, re-establishing America’s leadership in every field of technology…. While the critics argue that Cohen-Boyer would have had the same impact without patent protection, there are other more likely scenarios. It could have languished on the shelf as did many other published, but not patented, discoveries. It took a lot of work from Reimers before U.S. companies recognized its potential. That effort would not have been made to promote a scientific paper.

Is NIST Listening? Bayh-Dole is a Model for Federal Tech Transfer Improvement 

It would be a tragic mistake to blame federal tech transfer underperformance on Bayh-Dole. Bayh-Dole needs no amending. Bayh-Dole demonstrates how secure patent rights are the lynchpin to society’s getting the greatest benefit from federal research dollars.

Want a greater ROI for taxpayers? Restore the patent system, protect Bayh-Dole and cut the red tape strangling federal labs

Three events boosted our economic turnaround in the 1980’s: the passage of Bayh-Dole, which injected the incentives of patent ownership into the federal R&D system; the enactment of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which insured the courts would apply the patent law consistently; and the Supreme Court’s ruling in Diamond v Chakraberty that living organisms could be patented. That decision stated that patents could “include anything under the sun that is made by man.” Today that quote is only ironic.

Increasing the ROI from the Federal Labs

The biggest complaint about federal labs is it’s too hard to complete deals. Many federal labs must run pending agreements through byzantine departmental procedures. Companies wonder what’s taking so long and are surprised when negotiated points come back altered… One reason why universities outperform the labs is that many academic licensing officers come from the private sector. They understand the pressures companies are under to complete agreements.