TY - JOUR
T1 - Universities
T2 - The fallen angels of Bayh-Dole?
AU - Eisenberg, Rebecca S.
AU - Cook-Deegan, Robert
N1 - Funding Information:
As a justification for university patents, the logic of technology transfer has limits. Some university inventions surely fit the paradigm of early-stage discoveries requiring further substantial private investment, assisted by university scientists, to launch as commercial products. An important example highlighted in the Bayh-Dole hearings was candidate drugs funded by the National Institutes of Health (nih) medicinal chemistry program. Private firms had proven unwilling to develop these drugs and to shepherd them through the fda approval process under the terms of nih agreements from the 1960s that restricted the firms’ ability to secure exclusive rights.7 Exclusive patent rights were necessary to motivate pharmaceutical firms to invest in expensive clinical trials of promising new drugs. The nih responded by developing Institutional Patent Agreements (ipas) that enabled universities to patent drugs resulting from federally funded re-
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 by Rebecca S. Eisenberg & Robert Cook-Deegan.
PY - 2018/10/1
Y1 - 2018/10/1
N2 - The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 established a new default rule that allowed nonprofit organizations and small businesses to own, as a routine matter, patents on inventions resulting from research sponsored by the federal government. Although universities helped get the Bayh-Dole Act through Congress, the primary goal, as reflected in the recitals at the beginning of the new statute, was not to benefit universities but to promote the commercial development and utilization of federally funded inventions. In the years since the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act, universities seem to have lost sight of this distinction. Their behavior as patent seekers, patent enforcers, and patent policy stakeholders often seems to work against the commercialization goals of the Bayh-Dole Act and is difficult to explain or justify on any basis other than the pursuit of revenue.
AB - The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 established a new default rule that allowed nonprofit organizations and small businesses to own, as a routine matter, patents on inventions resulting from research sponsored by the federal government. Although universities helped get the Bayh-Dole Act through Congress, the primary goal, as reflected in the recitals at the beginning of the new statute, was not to benefit universities but to promote the commercial development and utilization of federally funded inventions. In the years since the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act, universities seem to have lost sight of this distinction. Their behavior as patent seekers, patent enforcers, and patent policy stakeholders often seems to work against the commercialization goals of the Bayh-Dole Act and is difficult to explain or justify on any basis other than the pursuit of revenue.
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U2 - 10.1162/DAED_a_00521
DO - 10.1162/DAED_a_00521
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85054029303
VL - 147
SP - 76
EP - 89
JO - Daedalus
JF - Daedalus
SN - 0011-5266
IS - 4
ER -