Inventions created from university research used to be federally regulated. The Federal Procurement Regulation contained a patent rights clause that, in many cases, required federal contractors or their inventors to assign their inventions to the federal government unless the funding agency determined that the public interest was better served by allowing the contractor or inventor to retain principal or exclusive rights.
The federal government didn’t do a very good job of handling this responsibility. They weren’t equipped with specialized knowledge of the intellectual property, they didn’t know what marketing it needed, and they usually didn’t have intricate knowledge of who the big players were in various industries. Also, the government wouldn’t offer exclusive rights to license the intellectual property because they believed it ran contrary to the idea that publicly funded inventions should be available to everyone. That drove a “stake through the heart of tech transfer,” one technological transfer consultant explained.
The Bayh-Dole Act (formerly the Patent and Trademark Act Amendments) is a federal law enacted in 1980 that allows universities, non-profit organizations and businesses that receive federal funding for research to pursue ownership of the ideas and products they create, rather than forfeiting the rights to that technology/invention to the federal government. As a result of Bayh-Dole, universities began setting up their own technology transfer offices to handle all aspects of intellectual property management.
How has the Bayh-Dole Act improved the patent process for American inventors at universities?
What are the downsides to this legislation?
What were some of the pitfalls of the previous system?
Are there any significant amendments to the legislation currently being considered?