Author Archives: Gerald Barnett

Principalities of Patenting

I am working through the ways in which a university comes to acquire patent rights from faculty inventors. This is turning into a series of articles. This stuff isn’t easy–but then, as far as I can tell, it’s not easy … Continue reading

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A university's innovation policy depends on academic freedom

Build your innovation policy around academic freedom. The distinctive advantage of a university faculty member is that she or he has access to institutional resources (and so does not have to grub for them personally) but is free from institutional … Continue reading

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Notes and Comments on G. Kenneth Smith’s Article on University Ownership of Inventions

G. Kenneth Smith’s 1997 article “Faculty And Graduate Student Generated Inventions: Is University Ownership A Legal Certainty?” on university patent policies is worth the read, even nearly 20 years after it was published. The Bayh-Dole part might be redone, now … Continue reading

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The Status of University Patent Policy

What is the status of a university patent policy? Or, put it another way, how does it come about that a university can force faculty and students to give up ownership of their personal property–patentable inventions–property that inventors own by … Continue reading

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The University Dual Monopoly Patent Policy Goes to 11

The current approach to university IP management implemented throughout the United State involves a broad definition of what constitutes an “invention” or “intellectual property” a broad scope for who is required to comply with the policy a policy demand of … Continue reading

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The Vampire at the Neck

Consider the three elements of the simple mantra I outlined in my last post. Take IP License IP Make Money Let’s work through these three imperatives. Take IP Administrators have expanded the definition of “IP” from patents and copyrights to … Continue reading

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Disconfirmation makes it stronger

Last night I dreamed I was engaged in a debate. It was for a call-in radio show. Oddly, we were on one of those huge chartered buses. The bus was filled with university technology licensing managers. Dunno where we were … Continue reading

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Faculty IP and Academic Freedom, Part I

I am working out how to disrupt the now-pervasive use of management-speak to describe the obligations of university faculty with regard to intellectual property they produce–largely, almost entirely their personal intellectual property, by operation of federal copyright and patent law, prior … Continue reading

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Banging Our Hearts Against the Wall

Now that an arguably effective national infrastructure for dealing with inventions made by university faculty has been systematically dismantled over three decades in favor of institutionally self-serving patent administration, it is difficult to see a road back to pre-Bayh-Dole management. … Continue reading

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University Invention Management Policy Drift

In the olden days, when at least this part of the university world had not become captivated by a misrepresented Bayh-Dole Act, faculty were often expected to negotiate the IP provisions of sponsored research agreements, which often took on the … Continue reading

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