Author Archives: Gerald Barnett

The Faculty Stack, 3: Linking Federal Resources with Free Play

Posted on April 12, 2021 by Gerald Barnett

We are working through the idea that faculty independence is an important element in the justification to push federal funding for research activities to universities. For Vannevar Bush, the idea was that the frontiers of science were best explored by … Continue reading →

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Latker Here, There, and Everywhere in Bayh-Dole

Posted on April 9, 2021 by Gerald Barnett

Norman J. Latker is the architect of present federal patent policy. Let’s work through his resume. It provides a remarkable tale of persistent influence leading to the unenforced, innovation-stagnating, dismal-performance (but it’s all kept secret, by law) Bayh-Dole Act. Latker … Continue reading →

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The faculty stack, 2: Basic Research and IP Policy

Posted on April 8, 2021 by Gerald Barnett

The idea I will pursue here is that university faculty represent a distinct and important kind of discoverer–researcher, investigator, noodler, gadgeteer, irrelevanteur, loon. Our search for what we cannot imagine depends in having at least some really capable folks out … Continue reading →

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For Latker, Bayh-Dole wins a political battle over delivery of research to the public

Posted on April 7, 2021 by Gerald Barnett

In February 1974, Norman J. Latker, patent counsel for the NIH, gave a talk in Chicago with the title “Progress Towards a Uniform U.S. Government Patent Policy for Universities and Non-Profit Organizations.” You can find most of it at IP … Continue reading →

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The faculty stack, 1: Academic Freedom and IP Policy

Posted on April 7, 2021 by Gerald Barnett

[The aim is to get to the next article, but I found myself writing this one first. How it goes. Purdue is the ground zero for what has become the Bayh in Bayh-Dole, so we may as well. Purdue has … Continue reading →

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NIST, Bayh-Dole Policy, and Disincentives

Posted on April 5, 2021 by Gerald Barnett

I spent the past two weeks working on comments in response to NIST’s proposed new regulations for Bayh-Dole. I ended up with 73 pages of answers to questions and section-by-section comments, and about 60 pages of outtakes. NIST didn’t make … Continue reading →

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Unenforced, Bayh-Dole enables a federal offer to look the other way on price-gouging

Posted on March 29, 2021 by Gerald Barnett

The government’s failure to use its government license to practice and have practiced (=make, use, and sell) puts undue pressure on march-in to address nonuse and unreasonable use of inventions arising in work receiving federal support. NIST wants to gut … Continue reading →

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Bayh-Dole support for inventors and free competition

Posted on February 28, 2021 by Gerald Barnett

I made this a twitter thread. I’ll post it here as well and work to round it out as I have time. It’s the flip side of being blunt about what happens under Bayh-Dole if an inventor does not assign … Continue reading →

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Being blunt about Bayh-Dole operations, 2

Posted on February 26, 2021 by Gerald Barnett

Under Bayh-Dole, a federal contractor has no special right, and no obligation, to take ownership of inventions arising in federally supported research or development. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, in Bayh-Dole that suggests that Congress had any intention to make … Continue reading →

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Being blunt about Bayh-Dole operations

Posted on February 25, 2021 by Gerald Barnett

Let’s be blunt. If you are a federal contractor and you don’t take/accept ownership of an invention arising in federally supported research or development, you have no Bayh-Dole obligations with regard to that invention. You do not have to get … Continue reading →

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