University tech transfer folks got Bayh-Dole wrong, repeated it so often that it started to sound right, were told by the Supreme Court they were wrong, and now are trying to implement privately what sounded good to them–compulsory university ownership of inventions to make money. Problem is, it’s pretty much the same approach that 30 years ago university folks were arguing didn’t work. Now, university bureaucrats are claiming ownership instead of the federal agencies. The irony is thick.
The present assignment policy changes being passed around universities have nothing to do with Bayh-Dole or Stanford v Roche, which the university bureaucrats apparently also don’t understand. Rather than moving to correct misleading and simply wrong policy statements and summaries of Bayh-Dole, the universities are trying to “correct” the “intent” of their policies to make employment or use of facilities the new condition that requires vesting of invention ownership with the bureaucrats.
I keep hoping a Vice Provost/Chancellor/President of Research will step up and say, enough is enough, not at my institution. This is the perfect time. Accept the uncertainty of inventors making choices, take on the range of possible interactions and choices, and support these. That would be cool. That would make sense. That would put the groove back in American university innovation.