Recently, probably partly in response to the flap
over Bayh-Dole launched by the Kauffman Foundation, the White House
issued an RFI (Request
for Information) on the commercialization of university-based research.
Many institutional offices around the nation have put effort into their replies, and since they will take care to promote their own efforts and programs, I decided to write my own response, treating the RFI more as an RFC (Request for Comment) so I could write a discursive treatment rather than a mere catalog of programs I find meritorious.
You can read my response to the RFI in pdf form here or in text form after the break. Please feel free to comment below, or to send me email.
April 2010
To Whom it May Concern:
I write in response to the RFI on Commercialization of University Research issued jointly by the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Economic Council in Federal Register 75:57. pp. 14476-8. I write as a practitioner, a consultant in technology-based economic development who has been active in the field since 1986.1 My comments are undifferentiated with respect to Parts I and II of the RFI.
To understand what works and where help is still needed, one must begin with what already works. For nearly three decades, the Bayh-Dole Act has provided the legal and policy stability necessary for American universities to design, launch, and sustain the offices that protect discoveries made by faculty in the course of federally financed research. These offices also negotiate licenses with firms willing to undertake the development of commercial products based on that intellectual property.
To read the full, original article click on this link: My response to the White House RFI on commercialization of university technologies
Author: David Hochman
