Category Archives: Innovation

Moose Turd Pie, and No Good

The Economist ran a cover story last week on “how science goes wrong”: An argument of the piece is that journals like splashy claims but don’t have room for studies that announce validation of prior reports. The article goes on … Continue reading

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AAUP Supports Freedom to Innovate

The AAUP has just published a draft report that lays out the case for the importance of academic freedom with regard to patents.  Just because faculty scholarship may include inventive work does not trigger a mandate for absolute university control … Continue reading

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Not Again!

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, at one strange point a whale and a bowl of petunias come into existence and have only a few moments to come to grips with their situation. In about five minutes, a connection … Continue reading

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Newco and its discontents

Technology Transfer Tactics has an article out on UCLA’s Newco, but they don’t seem to have reviewed the Newco documents.  I don’t have a subscription, so I won’t try to link to it.  I expect the purpose of the story … Continue reading

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Digging in New Places, Following Old Patterns

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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Breaking Three Cords

The architecture for university IP management is deeply entrenched. It is held in place by a set of three narratives, each of which is readily challenged, but together have such a satisfying outcome that it is difficult for administrators not … Continue reading

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Well, if you don’t like these five things, I’ve got others.

Innovation Daily has just published “Five Things Technology Transfer Offices Wish Their Start-ups Knew.” This appears to be based on a presentation the author made at the last AUTM meeting. Perhaps that’s why the piece argues that university IP offices … Continue reading

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Hope of Better Things

Vannevar Bush (1949) [emphasis added]: The real reason we made such great progress was not bright inventors or clever gadgets.  It was the fact that we had thousands of men who understood the underlying science in the field, who skillfully … Continue reading

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Patent Policies of Confidence, and Patent Policies of Fear

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

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The University as Bayh-Dole Privateer

Why would a nation-state seek to claim ownership of inventions made by its citizens?  That is, what uses would a nation-state put its patent system to, beyond those that one might expect of an individual inventor, entrepreneur, investor, company, university, … Continue reading

Posted in Bayh-Dole, Commons, Innovation, Metrics, Policy, Shanzhai | 1 Comment