Technology transfer : administration of the Bayh-Dole Act by research universities : report to Congressional committees / United States General Accounting Office.

  • United States. General Accounting Office
Date:
[1998]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Technology transfer : administration of the Bayh-Dole Act by research universities : report to Congressional committees / United States General Accounting Office. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    B-275266 Despite the perceived success of federal efforts to support R&D, by the late 1970s there was a growing dissatisfaction with federal policies related to the patenting of the scientific knowledge resulting from the research. Many officials, for example, believed that federal laboratories harbored information that was not being disseminated to those who could make use of it. Similarly, there was a concern that the advances attributable to university-based research were not being pursued because there was little incentive to seek practical uses for inventions to which the federal government retained title. Those seeking to use government-owned technology found a maze of rules and regulations set out by the agencies in question because there was no uniform federal policy on patents for government-sponsored inventions or on the transfer of technology from the government to the private sector. In 1980, the Congress addressed these concerns by enacting legislation to bolster the economic impact of federal R&D investments. One such law was the Bayh-Dole Act (P.L. 96-517, Dec. 12, 1980). The purpose of this act was to reform U.S. patent policy related to government-sponsored research. At the time, fewer than 5 percent of the 28,000 patents being held by federal agencies had been licensed, compared with 25 percent to 30 percent of the small number of federal patents for which the government had allowed companies to retain title to the invention. In this connection, the Bayh-Dole Act had two purposes: (1) to allow universities, not-for-profit corporations, and small businesses to patent and commercialize their federally funded inventions and (2) to allow federal agencies to grant exclusive licenses for their technology to provide more incentive to businesses. In 1987, the Department of Commerce issued regulations, which are codified in 37 C.F.R. 401, to implement Bayh-Dole. Some of the key provisions of the law and regulations are as follows: Unless the agency informs the university at the time funding is provided that the agency will retain title to inventions derived from the projects funded because of specifically identified “exceptional circumstances” or other specified conditions, the university is entitled to retain ownership of any inventions created as a result of the funding. The university must disclose to the appropriate federal agency any invention created with the use of federal funds within 2 months of the date the inventor discloses the invention in writing to the university. To retain ownership, the university generally must notify the agency of its election to retain title within 2 years of the date of disclosure. When
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