Lots of questions remain from our variation on the theme.
What about F’s written agreement? Can F sign any documents for the company, such as the declaration and oath that F is a true inventor? F has an obligation to protect the government’s interest, but signing papers for the company doesn’t change this obligation.
What happens if F lets S do a bunch of work on the grant informally, because S’s company has an interest in the outcome, and S invents solely? Does the government have a claim on S’s title? Does the university? If so, is the university’s claim on behalf of the government or just in its own interest? Is making a claim by either a necessary bit of a broader effort to advance the use of inventions?
There are a lot of questions. Fortunately, no one seems to care about these. What’s remarkable is that folks are so fixated on just one of these–having to do with a joint invention where an investigator commits invention rights and then the university goes and accepts a grant directly within the scope of that commitment, and lets that investigator participate, and then folks want Bayh-Dole to cancel the prior commitment, not to protect the government’s interest, but to protect a private interest of the university.