Posts Tagged: "Academic Patent Licensing"

Bayh-Dole Rocks While the Critics Play the Same False Note

A just-released study co-sponsored by the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) and AUTM provides new evidence of the significant contribution academic patent licensing makes to the U.S. economy. The report is the most recent in a series, and the numbers are astounding. This couldn’t come at a better time. Renewed efforts are underway to subvert Bayh-Dole from an engine driving innovation into a weapon for government price controls. Even though the Bush, Obama and Trump Administrations wisely rejected their theories, the critics keep banging the drum, and some in Congress are dancing to their tune.

When Universities Patent Their Research

A few months ago, a judge ordered Apple to pay the University of Wisconsin $506 million for infringing one of its tech patents. Last year, Carnegie-Mellon University won $750 million in a patent infringement lawsuit against Marvell Technology Group. With such big-money patent cases in the news, you might think that owning a patent can create a major windfall of profit for universities. While this has proven true for a handful of institutions, the truth is that most universities actually make little or no money from licensing the inventions they produce.  

Conservatives’ Letter to U.S. Senate Says Preserve Bayh-Dole

Though aimed at certain pharmaceutical products, Sens. Angus King’s and Bernie Sanders’ potential amendments would throw the key to the Bayh-Dole Act’s success —certainty and exclusivity of the intellectual property associated with technology transfer in order to agree to attempt commercialization in the first place — into disarray beyond a single product or sector, the signatories contend.

Toronto Real Estate Board Dispute Shows Awkwardness of Copyright Protection for Databases

Legal protection for databases in Canada is, perhaps surprisingly, a little convoluted. In some jurisdictions, unique database rights have been legislated (e.g. the EU). This is not yet the case in Canada where protection instead comes from a patchwork of rights provided by different regimes. Traditional intellectual property (“IP”) rights provide some protection, but with sufficient gaps to make exclusive reliance on IP inadvisable… In the decision, the Competition Tribunal found that the information in the MLS database does not attract copyright protection. The decision sets out the Tribunal’s attempt to apply the relevant copyright case law to determine whether copyright subsists in the overall arrangement of information in the MLS database.

The National Cancer Institute Didn’t Deserve This Treatment From the New York Times

While those in the military are often thanked for their service, let’s also thank researchers like Dr. Rosenberg and his colleagues who spend their lives trying to alleviate human suffering. But that can only happen when their discoveries are commercialized– otherwise they are merely generating interesting research papers. Rather than deserved accolades, NCI and Kite Pharma got a pie in the face from the NY Times.