Author Archives: Gerald Barnett

A Koan

The innovateur was compelled to visit first the City of Clowns.  The clowns took the innovation from the innovateur. The clowns were not funny, and they were not helpful, and they were not innovative.  The innovateur watched smoke rise from … Continue reading

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Bozonet Theory Review

Let’s review some basic bozonet theory. Transmission Congestion produces imitative practice When an organization, profession, or activity takes in rapidly a number of new practitioners without a formal course of training, and requires expertise of these practitioners, and these new … Continue reading

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The Dark Lesson

There is a dark lesson in the Stanford v. Roche situation. For two years, university patent administrators have led an all-out attack on research inventors, have distorted Bayh-Dole, and demonstrated they form a monoculture of inventor-loathing, bureaucracy-creating political operators. It’s … Continue reading

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100% Bayh-Dole

There’s talk that the Stanford v. Roche decision somehow forces a change in university practice from using promises to assign in patent agreements to present assignments of future inventions. This is nonsense. The same loons who could not read Bayh-Dole … Continue reading

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Seven Claims about Bayh-Dole

Let’s look at some of the claims made about Bayh-Dole. 1.  Bayh-Dole is about commercialization. Only a little tiny bit.  Get over it. No, really.  Look at the objectives of the Act, at 35 USC 200.  The primary emphasis is … Continue reading

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Harmonizing with the Wrong Thing

Which is more important, to harmonize US patent law with that of other countries, or to keep it consistent with the insights expressed in the US Constitution, which supports progress through the personal rights of inventors? The Constitution allows the … Continue reading

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Some of my favorite quotes

From the Opinion: The Act’s disposition of rights—like much of the rest of the Bayh-Dole Act—serves to clarify the order of priority of rights between the Federal Government and a federal contractor in a federally funded invention thatalready belongs to … Continue reading

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Supreme Court rules on Bayh-Dole

From the Syllabus: Held: The Bayh-Dole Act does not automatically vest title to federally funded inventions in federal contractors or authorize contractors to unilaterally take title to such inventions. University faculty leadership now need to use this opportunity to reform … Continue reading

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Is invent-for-hire coming to the US? Please, no.

Section 118 of title 35, United States Code, is amended to read as follows: § 118. Filing by other than inventor A person to whom the inventor has assigned or is under an obligation to assign the invention may make … Continue reading

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University "Commercialization" and "Commercialization Programs"

I argue that while new products on the market is a primary measure of commercialization, the critical metric for a university commercialization program is the number of unlicensed inventions that the university has claimed.   Every unlicensed invention acts to suppress … Continue reading

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