Joe Allen, whom I respect a great deal for his work on Bayh-Dole, won’t give up after the ruling on Stanford v Roche. He has published a piece that aims to undermine the arguments I made in a commentary published in GEN.
Joe, however much you want to reconstruct the history of the legislation, and however much Sen. Bayh wants the legislation to reflect his present, personal intent for the law, Bayh-Dole reads as it does, and is implemented by the Department of Commerce as it is. Law isn’t the whim of one person who worked on it, but is held in common, to be read and understood by citizens and interpreted by the courts. That’s what has happened in Stanford v Roche, and the level thing to do would be to respect the judgment of the court on the matter.
It’s a dead parrot, Joe. It’s not pining for the fjords any longer. Your commentaries only serve to delay necessary change–change that would be a tremendous boon to the university technology transfer movement that you played a pivotal role in transforming.
For anyone with doubts about Stanford v Roche, read this.
The thing to do now is to get on with changing policies and practices to comply with Bayh-Dole, correct the record with faculty and companies, and explain to senior administration officials how things went wrong and what should be done to change. That’s an obligation incumbent on the entire US technology transfer community. Joe, you could play a leadership role in this, which would be much better than playing the laggard. It’s okay, Joe. You fought for Stanford, and it didn’t go your way. Now it is time to show your character, let go of what clearly is not true–and never was, other than as personal intent–and contribute to the map of how things should be to preserve academic strengths–creativity, independence, responsiveness–while using patent rights to promote practical application of federally supported inventions.
My argument is that the Bayh-Dole agent model with institutional review is vastly preferable for university research, collaboration, and innovation to universities adopting a monoculture of corporate-style own-everything-outright. What say you?