Category Archives: History

Bayh-Dole, the bureaucratic solution to massive federal funding of faculty research

Posted on February 10, 2016 by Gerald Barnett

Prior to 1912, university faculty generally did not seek patents. Cottrell at the University of California created Research Corporation to act as an external agent to present his and other faculty members’ inventions to industry. The Board of Research Corporation … Continue reading →

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Voyage of the beagles

Posted on December 28, 2015 by Gerald Barnett

It’s not that I wanted to take a hiatus from posting ideas here at the Research Enterprise blog, but other writing tasks and various gusts of the life winds took me away from this forum. But I intend to be … Continue reading →

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How Bayh-Dole dammed, and then damned, the commons

Posted on October 2, 2015 by Gerald Barnett

This is the third article in a series. The first is here. The second, here. The motivating driver of the Bayh-Dole Act, if we can be blunt, was to put the affiliated research foundations in a position to keep with impunity any … Continue reading →

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Bayh-Dole was written for the research foundations. Pity for us all that it didn’t work out.

Posted on October 1, 2015 by Gerald Barnett

After I wrote the previous article, it struck me that the origins of Bayh-Dole really are with the affiliated research foundations trying to license patents to industry, not with the universities, and not even with Research Corporation (which remained neutral … Continue reading →

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How Bayh-Dole failed to protect faculty inventors (from university administrators)

Posted on September 28, 2015 by Gerald Barnett

[Now with some revisions in the second paragraph that on reflection were worth making.] There are a number of things wrong with the Bayh-Dole Act, such as the lack of accountability for the disposition of privately held patents on inventions … Continue reading →

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Come in from the cold

Posted on September 19, 2015 by Gerald Barnett

In The Economist for August 8, there’s an article on the problem of patents. The article questions the utility of patents and points to a number of situations in which patents appear to block innovation or have nothing to do … Continue reading →

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The Legal Context of University IP, Part 1 Revisited

Posted on September 14, 2015 by Gerald Barnett

In 2010, the National Academies and the National Research Council published a commissioned a report–The Legal Context of University Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer by Sean O’Connor, Gregory D. Graff, and David E. Winickoff. The report lists 45 findings and expands … Continue reading →

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Bayh-Dole is a dismal failure. Here’s why.

Posted on September 6, 2015 by Gerald Barnett

At IP Watchdog, Gene Quinn has published an opinion piece on the virtues of the Bayh-Dole Act–“Patent policy is just too important for subterfuge and academic folly.” The impression he leaves is that anyone critical of Bayh-Dole is irrational, teaching … Continue reading →

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How we got here, in twelve chapters, 5

Posted on February 1, 2015 by Gerald Barnett

5. Further Implications of the Faux Bayh-Dole Act The rise of the faux Bayh-Dole Act led university administrators with low status suddenly to see a way to acquire substantial power, using a claim that federal law gave them a mandate to take … Continue reading →

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How we got here in twelve chapters, 4

Posted on January 9, 2015 by Gerald Barnett

[I really do have the outline for the other 8 chapters! I just need to get back to pulling the explanatory text together] 4. Bayh-Dole the Killer The Bayh-Dole Act is passed in 1980 on the premise that doing so … Continue reading →

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