Inside Higher Education has run a story on the AAUP Freedom to Innovate initiative, quoting a number of people who think it’s a good idea. And it is! But there is one person who thinks compulsory university ownership of faculty scholarship is a really keen thing:
Ada Meloy, general counsel for the American Council on Education, said she saw no evidence of an escalation in university claims to ownership over faculty intellectual property, and that what discussions have emerged following Stanford v. Roche are necessary.
“Many institutions are making these changes based on their reading of the Supreme Court decision,” she said. “It’s all intended to ensure that both the faculty member and institution can benefit from any successful commercialization of the research results,” and to avoid the uncertainties of that case.
I have added the highlighting. Let’s work through this shillware.
No evidence? Multiple universities have added present assignment language. Stanford, University of California, University of Washington, University of Utah among them. Universities have expanded the definition of “invention” to include “non-patentable” inventions, expertise, know-how, software, data, tangible materials, anything that was is not a “traditional academic work”–as if “tradition” ended in, say, 1950. The expansion of claims in intellectual property has been going on in an unrelenting, badly reasoned, and in some cases fraudulent way since the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act. The Stanford v Roche case brought the fraudulent part of the expansion to light, and the Supreme Court decisively threw it out. A number of university attorneys should have been fired immediately after the decision for malpractice, and universities should have undertaken comprehensive, public reviews of their IP policies and practices to restore them to their pre-fraud condition. Instead, the same failed attorneys that claimed federal law vested ownership of inventions with universities have been allowed to cover up their lack of understanding (or their lack of good intent) by the current “present assignment” scam.
Here is their “logic” as best I can construct it. Take it slow, then take painkillers:
We once asserted that Bayh-Dole vested ownership of faculty inventions made with federal support in the universities that hosted the federal grants. We therefore induced faculty to accept revisions to university policy that make such vesting a condition of employment. At that point, the university may legitimately expect to have ownership of inventions when they are made. Thus, regardless of the Bayh-Dole Act, our own policies now require that ownership vest with the university. The Stanford v Roche decision, however, relied on a clever use of wording, arguing that “hereby assign” is a real assignment while “promise to assign” or “will assign” is only a future conditional. Since we have always intended that the university will own all inventions made by faculty, we have changed the wording of policy to follow the clever use of wording recommended by the Supreme Court. Thus, the present assignment is not a change in policy and entirely consistent with past practice.
If this is a straw man situation, I double dog dare someone to write out the logic of the position in a better form. The logic is built on the premise that Bayh-Dole required assignment, patent policy therefore had to conform to that requirement, and once it did conform, it stood alone and it didn’t matter whether Bayh-Dole required it or not. Neat. The obvious bit here is fraud, and the only thing that mitigates this is that the argument will be made that “we sincerely believed that Bayh-Dole vested ownership, so how can there be any intent to deceive?” And after the Supreme Court decision, well, the policies already provide for ownership, so all we have to do is adjust language to take advantage of what the Court recommends.
Now, let’s take apart a few things. First, of course, the attorneys were dead wrong about Bayh-Dole. Absolutely wrong about the law in multiple ways. Bayh-Dole does not apply to universities, but to federal agencies. The controlling instruments for universities are the funding agreements, such as the one at 2 CFR 215, which has more to say about patents, beyond Bayh-Dole (see .37 for instance, or .36 (c)). The standard patent rights clause does not require, or assume, university ownership. In fact, it requires universities to confirm that faculty inventors have signing authority for assignments and licenses.
Anyone with a little effort can see this. Sincerity is just another form of bullshit if there’s no regard for truth, to cite Frankfurt on the matter. Almost scans with “Bobby McGee” if you think about it. Or, ignorance of the law is no excuse, especially for those claiming to be the world’s experts on it. Some “defenders” of Bayh-Dole, these–folks who apparently don’t take the time to understand the law or its implementation, misconstrue it, and lead everyone down the happy lane back to government control of faculty research, but now with the equation that selling patent rights to monopoly speculators for institutional money is the very essence of public benefit.
Bayh-Dole does not mandate commercialization. Commercialization is something identified by Bayh-Dole with American industry, not universities. Bayh-Dole gives universities no special standing to try to make money from patent licensing and litigation. Bayh-Dole has no objective to make universities, or faculty inventors, rich from patent licensing or litigation. The objectives of Bayh-Dole include promoting the use of inventions, collaboration between universities and industry, free competition and enterprise, and protecting the public from nonuse and unreasonable use of inventions. This latter bit is directed at anyone who owns such inventions–and especially universities and nonprofits (meaning, at the time, the invention management agents), who are called out in the standard patent rights clause for special restrictions not imposed on either faculty inventors or small businesses. Finally, there is no statement in Bayh-Dole that it is federal policy that every federally supported invention should pass through bureaucrat’s thumbs before any possible public use. Indeed, the argument made by the advocates for Bayh-Dole (not really true, but that’s politics) was that the federal government was doing just this sort of bureaucratic thumbing, and the capable and successful universities and their invention management agents would do something, um, different.
It is an absurd policy that research discoveries should have to pass through a university bureaucracy to be used. It is absurd that the bureaucracy should be given a mandate to make money from those discoveries as a pre-condition for their use. It is absurd that the bureaucracy should be given the liberty to make money any way possible–by litigation for infringement without having spent a dollar trying to develop or release inventions; by licensing to patent trolls, to attack industry use of such inventions; by hyping the potential of inventions, implicating federal funding and the university’s reputation, to attract gullible investors; by starting companies, and then ignoring whether the inventions licensed to these companies actually get used, so long as the stock price of the company goes up; by preventing all other inventions from circulating by filing patents on them, in the hopes of making companies pay more for access under the threat of infringement and to prevent the demonstration of any other possible approach to promoting the use of inventions.
Horrible stuff, done in the name of Bayh-Dole, done because university administrators decided that compulsory ownership to make money anyhow possible was a really good thing. Are you happy with this, Joseph Allen? It is, after all, your legacy, too. Is this what The Economist was thinking when it called Bayh-Dole “inspired”? Are these the happy eggs of the golden goose? No, this stuff is foolish crap, not golden eggs, as far as national policy on inventions made in faculty research is concerned.
So university attorneys, having goaded faculty into believing that federal law handed their inventions to their university hosts, then asserted that because faculty now believed this, that policy should be drafted to confirm that belief, and thus, the scheme became a condition of employment. Now that the swindle in all this has been exposed, the attorneys, rather than being shamed out of town, have the audacity to argue that the faculty cannot object to the swindle but rather must accept additional requirements in policy to ensure that the swindle remains in place.
The simple fact is, present assignments are being instituted so that university attorneys save face and aren’t fired for one or more of incompetence, abuse of powers, malpractice, and breach of duty to the university–duty to the entire university, including its faculty and its inventors. There must be a powerful code of silence at work, as I haven’t seen any evidence of a single university attorney willing to speak out concerning the work of those that led the charge for vesting in Stanford v Roche. Imagine. Not a single university attorney willing to come out and say–“alas, those folks [or we, or I] got it wrong, our policies are based on unfounded claims and assumptions, no matter what the intentions or sincerities of the past, everything has to be rethought, discussed, set right.”
Isn’t it amazing that after a Supreme Court decision invalidated scores of university patent policies and employment contracts, not a single university has acknowledged the fact or changed its ownership practice as a result? The “present assignment is no change in policy” is an attack on academic freedom, on the independence of faculty to choose the course of their research and to teach what they discover to anyone and to decide on the course of deployment of their work in whatever manner they see fit. The present assignment is no change in policy is an attack on innovation, on industry, on commercialization, on public use. It is the shot aimed at the head of independent research and initiative by a group of desperate administrators who have eaten into the neck of research activity deep enough to hit a big vein and have no intention of letting go, ever. Anyone got a match? Is there even one university attorney in this god-forsaken discussion that will stand up against the swindle? Surely, there has to be at least one. There ought to be one. Or has malaise and fear taken them every one?
The thrust of Ms. Meloy’s statement is that universities find it necessary to institute present assignments, along with their compulsory, comprehensive invention ownership policies. The purpose, so her statement goes, is so that the faculty inventors will “benefit” along with their institution from “successful commercialization.” I understand that this is not expected to be based on a reasoned argument. It’s political speech. But here are some bits of reasoning, anyway. First, the university could “benefit” because others choose to conduct their activities so that the university benefits–say, through a donation, or a sharing of proceeds, without any action on the part of the university to demand a piece of the action. This happens all the time, so don’t say it doesn’t, or wouldn’t. So “successful commercialization” does not require a university license, or benefit to flow through that license. The statement is in the form of an aspiration, but is put in the form of necessity, as if there is no other option worth considering.
Second, a university could benefit via a review of circumstances for equity. This is not a demand for money or ownership: it is a consideration of what the university has done that ought to give it something in return–acknowledgment, repayment, a share of income, a shop right, a license, co-ownership, ownership with royalty sharing, ownership without royalty sharing. That’s the range. A faculty committee, or an independent review board, could establish the equities based on circumstances. A policy then would bind inventors to submitting to the decision of such a review. Again, the university would be passive in its claims, asking only that equities be respected.
Third, faculty inventors may well benefit in any number of ways that do not involve “commercialization” or money. It is amazing that university administrators have come out with policy statements that ignore, and even forbid, such options. In some university policies, it is made to be “unethical” for university faculty to pursue uses of their research that do not first seek to make money, with the greater portion of that money going to the university. Such policies are immoral. Think what you want about the administrators who advocate for them. History is full of faculty inventors making decisions not to patent: look at digital computers, and the internet. These are vast open systems because the fundamental work was not patented. Yes, there a hundreds of thousands of patents in these areas now, but those come about because the basic work was kept free. Is this too difficult to comprehend? Is it so complex that the only recourse is to fall back on compulsory, comprehensive claims with the implication that any faculty inventor not seeking to be a greedy suckup to wealthy investors is an unethical incompetent? Gosh, this does go to 11, doesn’t it.
Finally, the argument for present assignments amounts to the claim that for a tiny few inventors to make money when the university does a “successful commercialization” license (meaning, the university makes money on the deal–has *nothing* to do with whether a new product is on the market), the entire faculty must submit to institutional ownership of their scholarship: a bureaucrat legally gets to decide whether a faculty member can teach what he or she has invented, can use “outside the university” that invention, or who should be the early points of contact to consider how to use or develop such inventions. In public universities, tech transfer offices routinely use “conflict of interest” laws to prevent faculty inventors from having any say in licensing decisions and negotiations. Also absurd, foolish, unethical. The big picture is, however, even worse: to hope to get money for a few inventions (way under 5%), we must own *everyone’s research results*–beyond patentable inventions–everything that isn’t worthless to our program of trying to make money. And if things are worthless–either before we claim them or as a result of claiming them or after we are done ruining them–then faculty have no business asking for them back. If faculty ask for these things back, then they clearly are not worthless. If they are not worthless, then we will try to make money from them (“realize value”), and it is unethical for faculty to try to do so on their own, and it is unethical for faculty to not want us to do so on their behalf. Sigh.
Now for “uncertainty of title.” This is presented as the great problem of Stanford v Roche, that Stanford just didn’t know what title it had. Simply not true on the facts, but worse on the legislative history. “Certainty of title” shows up in the legislative history of Bayh-Dole as a problem having to do with the decision-making at certain federal agencies (notably DOE and NIH) with regard to whether an invention management agent (notably WARF or Purdue Research Foundation, but also UC, Stanford, and MIT) could hold on to title that it has obtained from inventors, or whether the federal agency would demand assignment to the government. That decision was often one involving public policy and national interests. Should a method of doing research be held as proprietary by any one organization? Should a technique that many physicians could use immediately be sold off to a speculator? Should a design that ought to become a standard be made proprietary, benefiting only a single company who then would have an advantage in bidding for government work, among other things? Whatever “title certainty” meant to invention management agents trying to make a buck, for federal agencies it was more than capricious, inattentive decisions. It didn’t help matters that courts had found WARF guilty of multiple cases of anti-competitive patent licensing practices. There were good reasons for public accountability for private exploitation of patents on inventions made with federal funds. That doesn’t mean that there weren’t ways to improve the decision-making process, but also there were good reasons not to give everything over to speculative interests without accountability. And Bayh-Dole gutted public accountability for the private exploitation of patents on federally supported inventions. That was one of the primary purposes of Bayh-Dole’s advocates, and they sold Congress on it.
In the Bayh-Dole legislative history, “certainty of title” had to do with whether a sponsoring federal agency would decide to require assignment of title, or permit an invention management agent to retain title that it had obtained in the conventional way. Certainty of title had nothing to do with whether a faculty inventor had title, or had properly assigned title to the university, or to some other agent unbeknown to the university. That’s because, at the time Bayh-Dole was being debated, most universities did not require assignment of inventions to the university. For many, assignment was voluntary, or based on a review of the equities of the situation.
Now “title certainty” is used in an entirely different way by the universities. They want Bayh-Dole to somehow give universities certainty that they can claim title to inventions whenever they want. This is the root of the vesting argument. Not that the agent having obtained title in a conventional manner need not be worried that a federal agency will intervene and demand assignment of title to the government. But that the invention management agent can take title from inventors with impunity, so that they have no basis to object or resist. That is, title certainty is now a bullying tactic rather than a quiet possession argument. It is a matter of active taking, using threats, rather than a matter of voluntary mutual exchange, with a meeting of the minds, for good consideration, and a duty to act.
Title certainty is used to gut the accountability of the invention management agents–now mostly university administrators–to the faculty generally and to the principal investigators who lead research and to the inventors in particular, whose work the agents intend to take. “Title certainty” is as much to say, “we have no obligation to anyone in the university but ourselves.” It is the dream world of the speculator, to use someone else’s assets in their gambling, with no obligation to those from whom the assets have been taken. And university administrators apparently have bought into this, deeply. As have university attorneys. It’s shameful, it damages the standing of universities, it damages collaboration, it damages access and use of research results, it damages inventors personally, it damages university research, and it damages innovation and economic vitality. Anything I’ve left out? All for the sake of the money-seeking adventures of a coterie of administrators and attorneys, who get well-paying jobs out of it all, all for the hope of a big deal every decade.
In Stanford v Roche, uncertainty of title arose because Stanford pursued a claim of ownership knowing that it had permitted an employee to sign away rights to a class of inventions–an action that was entirely well formed and permitted under Stanford’s policy and patent agreement. The uncertainty concerning title arose from Stanford’s own later actions, not from its policy, paperwork, or federal law.
Now let’s work through the present assignment foolishness once more. Universities have got it so very wrong, not just about innovation, but even in the technical details. The only way their reading stands up is that it will cost $100K or so per lawsuit to drive them off their claims. Faculty don’t generally have that kind of money around, nor should they have to spend time litigating in a shared governance workplace. One would expect that folks could, say, reason things out.
Present assignments, as implemented in patent policy by universities, do little to address certainty of title to inventions. Part of the problem is that university administrators and attorneys have done an incompetent job of drafting such provisions. Part of the problem is that they have positioned the present assignment at the wrong spot. Part of the problem is that they continue to have a review step that makes the scope of claim indefinite and defeats the whole purpose of the assignment. Part of the problem is that despite all of this, there are the requirements of US patent law, and these are not so readily papered over by present assignments. So there are lots of problems, not just one problem in lots of parts. Even without going into detail, one might recognize that the present assignment effort cannot possibly address “certainty of title” in any conventional sense–it is there to paper over the spanking given to university attorneys by the Supreme Court, and to make it appear that nothing needs to change as a result of the Supreme Court decision in Stanford v Roche.
Now, sigh, the details. Title to inventions is a matter of federal patent law, at 35 USC 261. An invention is personal property. The US Constitution grants such rights to inventors. Thus, the US is not like countries in which an employer can expect to own the inventions of employees. In the US, an employer has to have an agreement on inventions, something more than an employment agreement, as the Supreme Court affirmed in Stanford v Roche. Even here, even with a perfectly valid assignment in hand, 35 USC 261 provides that if that assignment is not recorded timely in the patent office, then a later assignment to another entity is valid, voiding the first, if the later assignee does not have notice of the first assignment and pays a consideration for the assignment.
It does not matter whether the first assignment is by means of a present assignment or a conventional assignment after an invention has been made. It does not matter whether “promise to assign” should be interpreted to create a transfer of equitable and legal title just as “hereby assign” does. What matters is whether that assignment has been recorded timely, the second assignee has no notice of the first assignment, and the second assignee pays consideration for the assignment.
Now run through the facts in Stanford v Roche, taken broadly, with a present assignment in place (assuming it is competently drafted and implemented–which isn’t the case at universities–and using the loaded term “employee” where a faculty member is typically much more than simply an “employee”). An employee makes a present assignment to a university for future inventions. The university then permits the employee to work at a company for an extended time. In approving the work, the university approves the employee’s assignment obligation to the company. The employee then returns to the university and reports an invention that is clearly within the scope of the obligation to the company, and the company obtains assignment. The university then attempts to obtain assignment for itself, and seeks to void the assignment that it had previously approved. How is the employee’s assignment to the company voided by the prior assignment obligation to the university? How does that present assignment operate? It is *out of scope* because the university *changed its scope* when it permitted the employee to enter into the arrangement with the company. The present assignment problem is not method or timing but scope.
Perhaps university administrators fussing about the holes in their scheme to get compulsory, comprehensive ownership of faculty work are worried about a different situation. Stanford v Roche got them thinking, or, rather, worried. What if the employee assigns to someone else first, and then we ask for assignment and never know about the first assignment? Then it would be great to have an assignment that acted before the first assignment. So, impose a present assignment as a condition of employment. Now what happens. An employee makes an invention. Present assignment kicks in, and the invention is owned by the university, immediately and without any further notice. The university does not even know what it owns. For administrators smoking a heaping helping of such thoughts, it is magical. The rainbows, the ponies, the balloons.
But we are not done. The trip is not over. Withdrawal looms. The employee does the unimaginable and assigns the invention to a company. The ogre! the horror! But wait, the university still *owns* the invention, doesn’t it. Well, yes, in a manner of speaking, but not for long. If the new assignee does not have notice of the assignment to the university, and pays consideration, and records the invention in the patent office, then the present assignment to the university is void. The ponies go home. The balloons deflated. It rains without rainbows. There are floods, and ogres, and lightening. Administrators once filled with the hope of new sources of revenue are shattered. Not that the university might not benefit from the company’s ownership of the invention, but that the benefit does not come through their special licensing channel, into their budgets, for their control, and so that everyone recognizes how important they are. Dejection. The present assignment is a fool’s chase. Another malpractice product of dim attorneys who are no friends of faculty or universities, but like the spouses of drunks, the university administrators welcome them in every morning for another bout of abuse.
But wait, more hope. If the university publishes its patent policy, and that policy says there are present assignments, isn’t that enough to put any company on notice whether the company actually sees the published patent policy or not? But a policy statement that there are present assignments is not the same thing as the university actually carrying through on its requirement of itself to get present assignments. So the company would need to see the paperwork specific to the obligations of the employee from whom they obtained assignment. That’s the paperwork that would have to be published. It could be done, though at some expense. So, still hope.
Now we come to more of the incompetence. The university implementation of present assignments is general and at employment. There is no trade secret or non-compete provision to tie into the patent agreement as there typically is in corporate settings. There is no definite scope to the present assignment. It reads: employee hereby assigns everything to university, and university will assign back everything that it doesn’t want or is not allowed by law. The problem is, what is actually assigned? Inventions, non-inventions, data, software, know-how, first born children, five cats from a former life. Until the university has worked through what is assigned, no one knows the actual intent of the parties, or the nature of what has been assigned.
Most university policies contain the ruins of a review step, which originally was put there so that faculty could voluntarily submit an invention for possible university management, and the university would review the invention to determine whether it would take management, direct management to an agent, ask for something equitable, or decline any involvement. That review step is now repurposed to determine ownership. Moreover, in a number of states, the university’s general claim to everything is itself illegal. There are specific limits on what of an employee’s inventions an employer can claim. Is the invention in the university’s “line of business”? Did development of the invention use the university’s facilities or supplies? Were those facilities and supplies otherwise obligated to the employee without obligation to assign, as in the case of a federal grant, under which the university agrees by contract to provide the facilities and supplies and is compensated by the government for doing so? Until these matters are worked through, it is impossible that the assignment can take place. There is no certainty of scope, there is no definition of the invention assigned, there is no consideration of the qualifying circumstances, such as review by the university or ancillary arrangements.
Any company looking at the policy and the present assignment will not be able to know whether the university does or does not have a claim. It will be difficult, if not impossible, to show notice that an assignment via a general present assignment to the university has been made. The present assignment does not happen the moment an invention is made, but the moment that the inventor and university agree that the invention is within scope. A clear statement of scope is essential. The assignment is part of a contract, and the contract involves a meeting of minds, and that agreement is a matter of evidence–what is it that these parties reasonable intended. If an inventor does not agree with the university’s interpretation of scope, or if state law forbids the university’s interpretation of scope, then there’s no agreement, or an agreement has to be constructed from the evidence. Keep in mind, unlike typical employees, university faculty decide what they will study, how they will conduct their research, where they will do that research, how they report results. Their “scope of work” for the university is what they decide it is, beyond their “official duties”–which means, meeting classes, advising students, attending largely pointless administrative meetings, and arguing over parking.
A present assignment with a scope of “anything the university wants” is no scope at all. It is not even the university’s decision what a faculty member’s research scope of work is. The present assignment amounts to an agreement to agree on what the university wants. It’s not enforceable. There is no statement of the university’s “line of business”–increasingly the statement now is directed at the employee’s professional training. Nothing about how that training in biotech or engineering or art history has anything to do with producing inventions for the university, for sale to speculators.
Thus, as implemented, with failed scope, with a policy-required review for university interest, a present assignment does not provide notice of assignment to anyone. Furthermore, it does not even operate as an assignment until an invention is shown to be within the scope of the assignment. If the inventor does not believe that an invention is within that scope, then there is a failure of the agreement. That can be addressed–a court can decide what the agreed-upon scope must be. It is difficult to believe–though in law, as with divinity, all things are possible–that a present assignment with unlimited scope, or with a scope bounded by “everything a university declares to be within scope” or “everything in which the university has an interest” or “everything that is not otherwise contrary to law” works as an acceptable scope for an assignment instrument. How is that to be recorded with the patent office? How does that provide notice of an actual assignment to any other party–whether company or another university (as, when a faculty member leaves on university for another–this really happens, by the way)? Can’t. Doesn’t. A present assignment happens when the invention meets an agreed upon scope and there is consideration.
It is not even clear that a university policy demand for present assignment rises to the level of an agreement, or that such an agreement carries consideration. Facilities and supplies otherwise obligated and paid for can’t be consideration. Salary paid regardless of invention can’t be consideration. A royalty sharing policy (another ruin) can’t be consideration if it is tied to employment (as policies at universities generally are) rather than to the assignment itself. Even then, if there never is any payment, because never any royalties, how is that consideration?
Universities have a lot more to do to get present assignments implemented properly and effectively. For the past thirty years they have bungled Bayh-Dole, the singularly most important matter in their invention policy. They still employ those same attorneys and administrators who have done the bungling. Why would anyone think that they will not keep to form and continue their bungling–hoping that some day it becomes the law of the land?
There is a place to implement present assignments. It’s a reasonable place, and it works, even in university settings, and it isn’t at all clever and it doesn’t take faculty property in some nasty scheme set up for administrative impunity. But at this point, I’m not telling. Title uncertainty happens in university settings because university administrators demand ownership of inventions that they have no business, nor reason, nor justification, nor mandate to own. The issues with title to inventions would otherwise be the simple mess they have always been, subject to due diligence, goodwill, and following the required procedures. If universities operated on an invention equity model rather than an outright ownership model, the issues would be relatively simple, and would not need attorneys for the most part. Imagine that, a world in which innovation from universities could come about without the university administration assembling a hugely complicated and ineffectual mockery of policies, all for the sake of trying to make money, and equating the attempt with public spiritedness. It’s like some blood diamond operator justifying the operation because they want to make the world a happier, prettier place, and it will be, if they get the profits they hope for.
Whew. There is so much packed into Ms. Meloy’s defense of university present assignment practices. Perhaps her “tut-tut it’s necessary to screw faculty this way for their own good and that of the university” has been taken out of context. Maybe she is really angry about being misrepresented and IHE prints a retraction. I am not expecting any such thing, but then many things are possible. Soon we will hear from AUTM. Will they change their ways? Or will we get another does of inventor-loathing handwaving, with some irrational depiction of Bayh-Dole or the unsubstantiated “success” of the “present system” or a vision in which patents making money for administrators is the primary purpose of federal research funding for university faculty cojoined with the only possible alternative that research results will “just sit on the shelf”? You know, sometimes I get hopeful, but there are never the ponies and balloons. Maybe this time.
As it stands, AAUP has got a point, a big significant point, and a large swath of the university patent licensing industry has some introspection and public reconciliation to do. Just one honest university attorney in the bunch is all it will take to break the code of silence, and begin to correct the misinformation and injustice that has been done to faculty, and the damage to university-industry relations, to innovation, and to the public by this thirty year romp that has ruined the invention management prospects of America’s university research enterprise.