A few days ago, Bernie Knight, General Counsel of the USPTO, stated that in order to ensure optimal ROI on tax-payer-funded university research, the Patent Office would likely come out in support of giving universities stronger ownership rights. Some people are surprised to learn that most U.S. research universities own large portfolios of patents and copyrights; universities also stake claim to other by-products of federally funded research created by faculty and students such as research tools, integrated circuit chips, biological organisms, engineering prototypes and data. Right now, federal law (the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980) is somewhat vague about who has a greater ownership rights, the university inventor or her university. As a result, most universities clarify this grey area by writing intellectual property policies that put them in control of anything invented on campus.
How today’s U.S. research universities manage, or protect, their intellectual property portfolios is an increasingly controversial topic. Managing ownership issues around research results, patents, and knowledge in general is not a straightforward matter. Depending on who you ask, one person’s idea of protection could be another person’s idea of being shaken down, as evidenced by high-profile IP disputes such as Stanford vs. Roche. The debate goes something like this: those in favor of the current tech transfer model claim that universities are indeed protecting tax-payer funded innovation by owning research, patenting it, and trying to making money off of licensing royalties. Other stakeholders, however, claim that some universities, in the name of ”protecting” their IP portfolios, are actually not protecting anybody but their own interests, sort of like a mob thug in a mobster movie who ”protects” civilians from harm in exchange for hefty payments. The truth lies somewhere in the middle.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Protecting university inventions from…whom? « Triple Helix Innovation
