Category Archives: Policy

Can’t you see what Wisconsin has been doin’ to free?

Posted on October 16, 2015 by Gerald Barnett

In the summer of 1981, the Bayh-Dole Act went into effect, launching a tsunami that would sweep away the existing infrastructure for faculty-led use of patents to develop research discoveries. In its place, thirty-five years later, sits a manager-led system … 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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The Road to Redemption

Posted on September 21, 2015 by Gerald Barnett

Here’s a story in today’s Seattle Times about AnswerDash, a company formed by students and faculty at the University of Washington’s Information School (my emphasis): The company, founded in 2012, has raised more than $5 million, including a $2.9 million … 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 2 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. Here are comments on the findings of … 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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We are sure you will adopt this discovery faster now that it comes with a patent and a bureaucrat!

Posted on August 26, 2015 by Gerald Barnett

In Farewell to Reason, Paul Feyerabend examines cultural variety and considers the problem of the “objective” claims of science in the broader context of whether any given society consistently benefits from scientific objectivism, given how often science is wrong, how … Continue reading →

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