Category Archives: History

Vannevar Bush and the Unexpected Model of Innovation

In Science and Technology Policy in the United States: Open Systems in Action, Sylvia Kraemer spends a section of a chapter discussing Vannevar Bush and Science the Endless Frontier. Kraemer agrees that Science the Endless Frontier is an important document in … 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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Dual selectivity or dual monopoly? What’ll it be?

Archie Palmer’s surveys of university patent policies make clear that most universities for a long time did not have a patent policy, and when they did write a policy, often it recorded ad hoc practices–for the vast majority of universities, … Continue reading

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Patent policy as norming myth, with antidotes

Among those developing university patent policies, Archie Palmer was the Johnny Appleseed, publishing surveys and discussions of university patent policies for over three decades, from the 1930s to the 1960s. Palmer argued that it was important that universities have patent … Continue reading

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Compel them to come in

The Christian religion became political when Constantine decriminalized Christianity (313) and Theodorus later made it the state religion (380). At that point, the ad hoc development of beliefs and founding texts became a matter of official business–the norming myths required … 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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Was Bayh-Dole based on a misconception?

In an article published in 2013, Sean O’Connor argues that Bayh-Dole is the descendant of what he calls “the Biddle Report,” produced in 1947 by Assistant Attorney General John F. Sonnett (with final editing done by David Lloyd Kreeger) in … Continue reading

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Faculty IP and Academic Freedom, Part I

I am working out how to disrupt the now-pervasive use of management-speak to describe the obligations of university faculty with regard to intellectual property they produce–largely, almost entirely their personal intellectual property, by operation of federal copyright and patent law, prior … Continue reading

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Banging Our Hearts Against the Wall

Now that an arguably effective national infrastructure for dealing with inventions made by university faculty has been systematically dismantled over three decades in favor of institutionally self-serving patent administration, it is difficult to see a road back to pre-Bayh-Dole management. … Continue reading

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University Invention Management Policy Drift

In the olden days, when at least this part of the university world had not become captivated by a misrepresented Bayh-Dole Act, faculty were often expected to negotiate the IP provisions of sponsored research agreements, which often took on the … Continue reading

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