Well, the National Research Council has deliberated on university technology transfer, and apparently can’t get past the linear model, the consensus view of patent licensing, commercialization as the high point of dishing public assets to the wealthy and powerful, and a mania for making tiny improvements to narrowly conceived processes. The bozonet rejoices.
Let’s look at some findings.
Finding 1: “The first goal of university technology transfer involving IP is the expeditious and wide dissemination of university-generated technology for the public good.”
Why should the first goal be expeditious and wide dissemination? Why not considered and focused? Why would wide dissemination be a first goal? Why not an ultimate goal of a few inventions a decade–like 30 years of university efforts have demonstrated is all that is possible? And if one wanted wide dissemination, why not start with broad, non-exclusive licensing? What a confused noise.
Widespread dissemination by using exclusive patent licensing where most patents don’t get licensed and most that do go moribund, but *this* is a good thing. If this were truly the first goal, then universities would license non-exclusively, royalty free. But they don’t. They say that the neat thing about Bayh-Dole is that it permits exclusive licenses, where the government wouldn’t do this often. This was the breakthrough. So from the university perspective, it should be considered and focused, not rushed and epidemic.
Or, is “expeditious” code for “brain-dead standardized licenses where a one-off generic biotech license becomes the grail for all licenses to follow”. Yes, you see, licensing is a commodity activity. They can all be the same. The report all but appeals: please make patent licensing a commodity activity done quickly by clerks.
Why should it matter whether there is IP? Should not technology transfer also take in NIPIA–non-IP intangible assets? Why should technology transfer be construed only as those parts involving IP rather than know how, expertise, insights, and data? The report is not going to help us here. These are Findings, dammit, not just some ho-hum punditry.
Why should the first goal of technology transfer conflate inventions and patents with technology and IP? It’s clear that universities are largely clueless about using copyrights and trademarks to disseminate “technology”, but apparently the report writers cannot get to that point.
And what other purpose is there beside the “public good”? Given that universities argue that making money = public good, what’s the point? If one wanted to argue, more royalty-free deals, that would be interesting. No one is going to go there in this report.
One might note that most university “technology transfer” is fixated on inventions and patents and is subject to Bayh-Dole. University practice is furthermore fixated on “commercialization”, meaning seeking to create products in lucrative markets, measuring success by royalty income. Yet apparently the report cannot recite the stated objectives of Bayh-Dole and say, perhaps, that the first goal of technology transfer is to use the patent system to promote practical application of federally supported inventions. The report does not get at this senseless conflation of commercialization with practical application.
In all, it’s a bland finding that doesn’t even state the obvious. How very disappointing.