Category Archives: Bayh-Dole

University of Iowa’s patent policy claims reduced to simple terms

Restoring voluntary assignment for university inventors is the first step in reconditioning university invention management–and putting that management on a road of development consistent with university mores and roles. Voluntary assignment can be accomplished a number of ways. I will … Continue reading

Posted in Bayh-Dole, Bozonet, Policy | 3 Comments

Free Competition and Reasonable Pricing of Products Based on Subject Inventions

I have argued that the Bayh-Dole Act establishes, for inventions made with federal support at universities, a principle of patent exhaustion. We might call it a “first use” exhaustion of patent rights. Since the express, statutory purpose of the Act … Continue reading

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Conspiracy against inventors’ rights and 18 USC 241/42 USC 1983

University administrators have been fond to claim that the Bayh-Dole Act gives their universities ownership of inventions made with federal support–or a right of first refusal, or a prohibition on assigning ownership to anyone other than the university. This was … Continue reading

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The Very Model of a Modern University IP Policy Preamble

Recently, I have worked through intellectual property policies at Michigan and Texas. No university administrator is willing to write “We demand to own your work to try to make money, preferably by partnering with monopolist speculators.” That would violate the … Continue reading

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Subject Patent Exhaustion

Caltech has just sued Apple for infringement of a patent. The patent in question, “Serial concatenation of interleaved convolutional codes forming turbo-like codes” (US Patent No. 7,116,710) includes this statement of government interest: GOVERNMENT LICENSE RIGHTS The U.S. Government has … Continue reading

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From provider to predator: University of Texas patent policy, Part 3

In Part 2 of this series I compared the preambles of the 1977 and 1988 versions of the University of Texas System patent-cum-intellectual property policies. The 1946 policy was so straightforward that it did not need a preamble. It was … Continue reading

Posted in Bayh-Dole, Bozonet, History, Policy, Stanford v Roche | 2 Comments

FOIL Technology

A few years ago, the University of Washington claimed to have started a bunch of companies. I went through their lists of startups for two years and found they were making it all up. They claimed to have started 35 … Continue reading

Posted in Bayh-Dole, Bozonet, Metrics, Startups | 1 Comment

Effects, uncontested, are a policy's objectives

After 35 years, no reliable data on federally supported technology transfer Here is Sylvia Kraemer, writing in Science and Technology Policy in the United States (2006), on a fundamental problem in federal research policy identified by a Department of Commerce … Continue reading

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The Purpose of the Patent System for University Research

There is a general argument that the patent is a pretty useful cultural tool to stimulate and reward technological innovation. The owner of a patent has the right to exclude others from practicing (making, having made, using, selling, offering for … Continue reading

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Dealing with Norming Myths

There’s a new study out at Future Internet that looks at how Wikipedia’s norms have developed over the years. In “The Evolution of Wikipedia’s Norm Network,” Bradi Heaberlin and Simon DeDeo examine Wikipedia’s form of governance and find it to … Continue reading

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