Category Archives: IP

I read the brief today, oh boy

I worked through the MIT amicus brief in Stanford v. Roche. Better than AUTM and WARF. In brief, it wastes time on stuff that doesn’t relate, such as how important government research is to MIT. Instead it should focus on … Continue reading

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Optimal Boeufmerde: AUTM’s model of tech transfer can’t get any better

The Kauffman Foundation (reminder: co-funds RTEI but has nothing to do with this blog or my opinions) suggested in a recent proposal that university licensing practice was “sub-optimal.” This has gotten the rile up in the lost territorial alley dog … Continue reading

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Bad Advice for Bureaucrats

There is advice out and around that the lesson of Stanford v. Roche is to always use “hereby assigns” rather than “agrees to assign” in employment contracts dealing with patent rights. For universities, it’s not good advice. First, it misses … Continue reading

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More Intermittency Shining in Management Darkness

There is a simple IP policy no university will implement: It is our policy to take no position on any IP arising in the university unless the university commissions its creation or the proprietors of the IP request our involvement. … Continue reading

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Intermittency

In The Survival Game, David Barash discusses the prisoner’s dilemma as a instance of where the payoff for defecting on collaborators is better than playing nice. When such situations repeat, there are huge problems for collaborators in responding to attempts … Continue reading

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Bad Dog

Patent law is all social convention anyway. It is something we make up. We then task courts with enforcing our made up stuff as laws. Practices and habits build up. People and people in companies get used to the habits, … Continue reading

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Yes, Your Eminence

I suspect there also may be something else going on. Under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, the government cannot take private property without due process and just compensation. The contract between the government and the university forms that process … Continue reading

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Bayh-Dole at Large

Bayh-Dole 1) normalizes government agency approaches to claims on inventions made in government funded research; 2) places research institutions in a voluntary position to direct the disposition of claims on invention ahead of government agencies, provided the research institutions use … Continue reading

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Automagicality

37 CFR 3.73. “The inventor is presumed to be the owner of a patent application, and any patent that may issue therefrom, unless there is an assignment.” In a Bayh-Dole situation, the university is never the inventor. Even if one … Continue reading

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Scary Flying Clowns

The university IP administrators are arguing that faculty should have no voice in the inventions they make in their research work. They want federal policy to make universities into corporate-style contract research operations, creating IP for the benefit of the … Continue reading

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