Category Archives: Uncategorized

Federal agency patent enforcement under Bayh-Dole, 1

Posted on June 5, 2020 by Gerald Barnett

This may appear to be an outrageous claim, but it isn’t. Bayh-Dole does not authorize federal agencies to enforce patents held by the federal government. That much is not outrageous because there is nothing in Bayh-Dole that authorizes such enforcement. … Continue reading →

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University inventions that aren’t exactly worthless-3

Posted on August 29, 2019 by Gerald Barnett

To show the limits of policy rationalizations over the university use of patents to benefit the public, let’s consider only those university inventions that have “worth”–that aren’t (in the eyes of university administrators, at least) “worthless.” If we work this … Continue reading →

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Bayh-Dole Basics, 8: Reasonable Terms Comments-2

Posted on June 6, 2019 by Gerald Barnett

Now we get to government rights under march in. Here we have complications. In 1968, Norman Latker, NIH’s patent counsel, revived the Institutional Patent Agreement program, under which the NIH (and later the NSF) contracted with nonprofits so that a … Continue reading →

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Administrative lupus

Posted on January 19, 2019 by Gerald Barnett

I while ago I wrote an article on some suggestions for changing Bayh-Dole. The first suggestion was to add a research “exemption.” The authors–one a former senior university patent administrator from a very big university–were well meaning, and perhaps there … Continue reading →

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Bayh-Dole for university faculty

Posted on June 28, 2018 by Gerald Barnett

Let’s put Bayh-Dole plainly for university faculty. Under federal patent law, inventors own their inventions. Federal patent law does not require inventors to use the patent system. Federal patent law does not require inventors to assign their inventions. Bayh-Dole is … Continue reading →

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Thanksgiving 2017

Posted on November 23, 2017 by Gerald Barnett

To all those who seek to discover, invent, collect, develop, create, author, realize, and do something with any of that–thank you for your efforts, your insights, your inspiration. For those who build administrative systems to support such work–thank you, too. … Continue reading →

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The Purpose of Economic Life is Us

Posted on October 6, 2017 by Gerald Barnett

There is an order in the open-ended drift by which economic life develops and expands, but it is not the order of “challenge” and “response” to be found in military thinking or in Toynbee’s idea that civilizations die because they … Continue reading →

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Posting Update

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Gerald Barnett

It’s been a busy couple of weeks here. I’m in Santa Cruz for a few days helping with painting the house with my daughter and her husband. I’ve got a new set of articles almost ready to go, but they … Continue reading →

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Bayh-Dole’s restrictions on Pigpen use of licensing income, III

Posted on May 3, 2017 by Gerald Barnett

Bayh-Dole’s nonprofit royalty and license income provisions, thus, appear to have to do with navigating tax issues for nonprofit organizations arising from patent management activities. The effort in Bayh-Dole is to connect patent licensing income and the typical nonprofit exempt … Continue reading →

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Why Bayh-Dole . . . should go down

Posted on December 16, 2016 by Gerald Barnett

Here’s an even shorter response to Brian O’Shaughnessy’s inventor-loathing, Bayh-Dole-misrepresenting puff piece, “Why Bayh-Dole?” If individual rights are so important, then why do universities take institutional control of inventions? Locke and Madison argue for individual ownership. Universities use Bayh-Dole to strip … Continue reading →

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