Category Archives: History

Ten Years After 25 Years After Bayh-Dole, Part 5

We have been considering an article reviewing the Bayh-Dole Act published in Nature Biotechnology ten years ago. The purpose in working through the article is to show just how deeply the rhetoric of university “technology transfer” has gained a life … Continue reading

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Ten Years After 25 Years After Bayh-Dole, Part 4

We have looked at an article by Boettiger and Bennett reviewing the Bayh-Dole Act after 25 years. We have picked over the description of the law and pointed out how our authors mischaracterize the law to their own disadvantage. Bayh-Dole doesn’t … Continue reading

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Ten Years After 25 Years After Bayh-Dole, Part 3

Boettiger and Bennett look at Bayh-Dole after 25 years and discuss how things ought to change. To set up their discussion, they first characterize Bayh-Dole as having “shifted the incentive structure” for patents. Parts 1 and 2 of this series … Continue reading

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Ten Years After 25 Years After Bayh-Dole, Part 2

We are working through an article by Boettiger and Bennett that looks back on Bayh-Dole and wishes things were different in some ways. The actual thrust of the article, though, is about university patent practice. To get there, however, we … Continue reading

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Ten Years After 25 Years After Bayh-Dole, Part 1

Ten years ago Sara Boettiger and Alan Bennett, a couple of University of California licensing officers, published an article on Bayh-Dole in Nature Biotechnology, “Bayh-Dole: if we knew then what we know now.” Boettiger and Bennett paint a picture of … Continue reading

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University technology transfer as an import function

Here is Carlo Marco Belfanti, on “Guilds, Patents, and the Circulation of Technical Knowledge“: In 1554 the Republic of Lucca established a special office, the Offizio sopra le Nuove Arti, to undertake the task of “examining the ways of introducing … Continue reading

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After the parade

Sometimes I feel like my job is to come along after the parade and sweep up all the horse-manure left by AUTM folks. Crowds are gone, balloons all popped, marching bands safe back in their hotel rooms. University inventions locked … Continue reading

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Bayh-Dole all but mandates Government practice of subject inventions

The Bayh-Dole Act requires contractors retaining ownership of subject inventions to grant a non-exclusive license to the government. Commonly–and very wrongly–this license is depicted as a requirement that commercial vendors sell product based on subject inventions to the government “royalty-free”–meaning … Continue reading

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Exclusive licensing in Bayh-Dole, Part 2: The Lost Requirements

Part 1 of this two-part series discussed the difference between exclusive license and assignment, and why Bayh-Dole’s wording on the one remaining restriction on exclusive licensing was worded as it was–“exclusive right to use or sell.” Let’s look at how … Continue reading

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The Dole/Bayh Bill and Commercialization Rates

In 1983 Senator Bob Dole wrote a letter to Senator Charles Mathias, Jr. regarding a bill Sen. Dole intended to introduce to extend the “Dole/Bayh bill” (as Sen. Dole called it) to large businesses. I rather like the construction Dole/Bayh. Perhaps we … Continue reading

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