Author Archives: Gerald Barnett

Bayh-Dole Flow Down

Every so often I make an effort to show graphically how Bayh-Dole operates. The Bayh-Dole Act authorizes (arrow 1) the Department of Commerce to create regulations governing the disposition of patentable inventions made in the performance of work supported by … Continue reading

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Florida Atlantic’s patent policy misrepresents Bayh-Dole four ways in just one sentence

I have been working on some ideas regarding scope, but each time I go to university patent policies to illustrate the issues, I find totally crazy stuff. Here’s a bit from the “General Comments” section of Florida Atlantic University’s patent policy [the … Continue reading

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Better drafted agreements get read more often

John Gruber at Daring Fireball points out the following clause in the new Amazon Web Services agreement: 57.10 Acceptable Use; Safety-Critical Systems. Your use of the Lumberyard Materials must comply with the AWS Acceptable Use Policy. The Lumberyard Materials are … Continue reading

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Life in the fast lane surely make you lose your infringement case

Here is a simple question: Can a university sue for infringement of a patent on a subject invention? Clearly, one answer is “of course”–universities do so all the time, often playing the troll or the jilted lover. Let’s put the question another way: Does … Continue reading

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Bayh-Dole, the bureaucratic solution to massive federal funding of faculty research

Prior to 1912, university faculty generally did not seek patents. Cottrell at the University of California created Research Corporation to act as an external agent to present his and other faculty members’ inventions to industry. The Board of Research Corporation … Continue reading

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How university exclusive patent licensing suppresses commercialization pathways

A number of university licensing officers have made a big deal about exclusive patent licenses. The exclusive license, they argue, is the key advantage they have over the federal government’s typical approach to invention management. The purpose of the Bayh-Dole … Continue reading

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University monopoly IP practices kill the very thing they claim to seek

Although the Bayh-Dole Act is placed in US patent law, it actually makes few changes to patent law, as the US Supreme Court made clear in the Stanford v. Roche decision. Bayh-Dole largely forces federal agencies to adopt a uniform … Continue reading

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The VPR Letters, No. 3

Dear Vice Provost for Research, I said I’d write again and explain how your technology transfer office is still hugely important. If you remember, in my first letter I discussed how the prevailing approach to university research innovation has failed, … Continue reading

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The VPR Letters, No. 2

Dear Vice Provost for Research, In my last letter I pointed out how the aggregate-patent-license model for university technology transfer has failed. It is a seductive model. It sounds so reasonable, so clear. And yet it has failed to deliver. … Continue reading

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The VPR Letters, No. 1

Dear Vice Provost for Research, An insightful vice provost for research once told me that the director of technology transfer had the second most difficult job in the university, after the dean of medicine. Having served as a director of a campus … Continue reading

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