We helped work on an op/ed piece on the problems presented if Bayh-Dole becomes a vesting statute. Today IP Watchdog published it on their website.
Fundamental university research innovation values are vision, choice, respect, and mutual agreement–not money, monoculture, compulsion, and government taking.
These sets of themes point to very different directions to take university research innovation efforts, different expectations of university faculty, and different ideas about the role of IP in university research settings.
So what is it? Is servility the proper starting point for university interest in research inventions? Is that what Bayh-Dole was all about?
Isn’t it time to build university approaches to research innovation on a different model, one that values personal vision, offers real choices to inventors, research teams, beneficiaries of grant funded work, and to communities; one that respects inventors and other creative folk on the edges of the organization, and gets involved through mutual agreement? Isn’t that where the competitive edge to make an innovation difference in community is going to be?
Yes, that does not sound nearly so easy as compulsion, servility, accumulation, and process. What values should win out to lay the groundwork for research innovation? That’s the question.