Category Archives: Freedom

The Free Play of Free Intellects

Posted on August 3, 2013 by Gerald Barnett

The Bayh-Dole Act has been championed as a great turning point in the federal government’s management of inventions made by university faculty (for the most part) supported by federal money. The impression meant to be left with us is that … Continue reading →

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The Compliance Apparatus is Essential to Bayh-Dole

Posted on July 19, 2013 by Gerald Barnett

The Bayh-Dole Act is often presented as a boon to universities. Yet a reading of the law as it makes its way into federal funding agreements suggests otherwise. Universities are a problem, and a lot of apparatus of Bayh-Dole is … Continue reading →

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Digging in New Places, Following Old Patterns

Posted on July 4, 2013 by Gerald Barnett

An article in a recent Economist reports that elite craft industries in Italy–fashion and leather goods–are unable to find new workers even though there are jobs available that pay well and youth unemployment is 35%.  It seems that youth are … Continue reading →

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Equity Policies and Ownership Policies, Part III

Posted on May 30, 2013 by Gerald Barnett

Part I is here.  Part II is here.  Part III follows below. The policies of the form of 1962–dealing in equities, diverse, open, advocating the use of external invention management agents, if a university had a policy at all–supported the … Continue reading →

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Patent Policies of Confidence, and Patent Policies of Fear

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Gerald Barnett

Vannevar Bush, writing in the introduction to Modern Arms and Free Men (1949): This is not a history of what science did in the war; that has already been written.  It is an attempt to explore its meaning in the … Continue reading →

Posted in Freedom, History, Innovation, Policy | 1 Comment

Restoring Bayh-Dole's Fundamental Bargain

Posted on April 13, 2013 by Gerald Barnett

Bayh-Dole asks inventors in faculty-led, government supported research to choose an invention management agent.  If the inventors don’t choose, then the government gets to choose. Unlike practice in industry, university faculty had a range of options available to them when … Continue reading →

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How (f)(2) saves Bayh-Dole, the "worst bill I've seen in my life"

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Gerald Barnett

At the end of the majority decision in Stanford v Roche, the Supreme Court pauses to chide the universities that have come whining to it for federal power to strip inventors of their rights, all for, apparently, administrative convenience: Though … Continue reading →

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Fixing the Flaw in Bayh-Dole with Freedom to Innovate Legislation

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Gerald Barnett

The essence of the Bayh-Dole Act is that government, though it supports faculty-led university research, should defer to investigators and inventors who wish to develop the inventions they make. Bayh-Dole does this by pre-approving a broad set of arrangements that … Continue reading →

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15 arguments for the university innovation machine… and why they are wrong

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Gerald Barnett

University administrators are hot on the idea of compulsory institutional ownership of faculty “inventions.”  The idea of “invention” is itself the subject of expanding ideas of scope–not just patentable inventions, but pretty much anything that a university administrator thinks could … Continue reading →

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The Lens of the (faux) Bayh-Dole Act

Posted on January 18, 2013 by Gerald Barnett

I continue to be amazed at the persistence of the faux Bayh-Dole crowd. Like something out of The Road Warrior, they keep coming back to wreak havoc. Despite the text of the law, the Supreme Court ruling in Stanford v … Continue reading →

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