Posts Tagged: "Ralph Davis"

Remembering Norman Latker: The Passing of a Friend

If you’re in the profession of technology transfer, you just lost a close friend. Whether you knew him or not, you are a beneficiary of Norman J. Latker who passed away last weekend. Concerned that new innovations were driving up health care costs (a familiar sounding theme), the Carter Administration terminated the program. Norm, Howard Bremer, and Ralph Davis of Purdue set up a meeting with Senator Birch Bayh’s office asking that the program be made the basis for a uniform government patent policy. This request led to the introduction of the Bayh-Dole Act.

Statement of Senator Birch Bayh on the 30th Anniversary of the Bayh-Dole Act

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.

Bayh-Dole Turns 30, AUTM Celebrates Innovation with Awards

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.