Posts Tagged: "Senator Bob Dole"

The National Institutes of Health recently made its long anticipated ruling on a petition seeking to use the “march in” provisions of the Bayh-Dole Act as a mechanism for the government to control prices on drugs derived from federally-funded research by issuing compulsory licenses. The petition was a reiteration of one dismissed in 2004 seeking to have the government march in to control the price of Norvir, part of the AIDS “cocktail.” … Before Bayh-Dole not a single drug was commercialized when the government took patent rights away from inventing organizations. Under the law at least 153 new drugs and vaccines are now alleviating human suffering world-wide.

The Bayh-Dole Act unlocked those discoveries that were made with taxpayer money. It allowed businesses and nonprofits, such as universities, to retain title to their inventions that were made with federal funds and to license them to private companies for commercialization. It was a brilliant piece of bipartisan legislation that set the stage for commercializing hundreds of products, including life-saving treatments to which many of us cancer survivors owe our lives.

Today marks the 30th Anniversary of the most forward thinking patent legislation since Thomas Jefferson wrote the Patent Act in 1790, which was the third Act of Congress. Truthfully, the Bayh-Dole legislation is likely more forward thinking and inspired than even Jefferson’s work, given that the patent law written by Jefferson was merely an attempt to codify and improve upon the patent regime of Great Britain. The Bayh-Dole Act, which was enacted on December 12, 1980, has lead to the creation of 7,000 new businesses based on the research conducted at U.S. universities. As a direct result of the passage of Bayh-Dole countless technologies have been developed, including life saving cures and treatments for a variety of diseases and afflictions.

Bayh-Dole was created because of a glaring problem– billions of hard earned tax dollars invested annually in government R&D were being squandered by ineffective government patent policies. If this research cannot be taken out of the labs and turned into products, the public is being short changed. Even so, it was a long, tough road to travel, and we only succeeded by the smallest of margins. Turning around long standing government policies, no matter how ineffective, is never easy.

Betsy de Parry spoke of how the Bayh-Dole act affected her personally by lending time and resources to university discoveries that created the life saving treatment that has led her to 8 years of being cancer free. de Parry brought an emotional and very human element to the celebration because she is living proof of what this piece of legislation has meant to so many — it fostered discoveries and drugs that literally saved her life. Her story was quite moving and admittedly brought me to tears. For those of us who have loved ones afflicted by cancer, it gives me great hope that eventually a cure will be found.

We caught the tide– but just barely. That the Bayh-Dole Act passed was amazing. That it passed in a lame duck session of Congress with its principal author defeated, the US Senate changing hands, and a sitting president thrown out, was a miracle. Even then success was not assured. Fortunately, we launched and caught the tide. This is my “staff’s eye view” of how it happened.