Universities not sole cause of innovation deficit, government and industry outweigh

[John E., III, 2013 Volume 38, Journal Technology Transfer, “Redeploying Bayh-Dole: beyond Merely doing good to optimizing the potential in results of taxpayer-funded research”, Springer - DOI 10.1007/s10961-011-9231-x, accessed on 7-16-2024, GDI-ALG]

2 Non-university factors in the advancing innovation ecosystem

The purpose of this article is not to suggest that any and all problems with or impediments to advancing university innovations originate with universities or with their technology transfer offices. To the contrary, industry and government also contribute to the problems.

For instance, industry often fails to appreciate that US universities must comply with a regimen of laws and regulations relating to their status as either governmental bodies or public charities under § 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Among these are mandates to operate in furtherance of exempt, charitable, and educational purposes and not to permit private benefit (President’s Council of Advisors 2008; Clements 2009; Bohlander 2004). Consequently, universities have a legal mandate to ensure prompt dissemination of research results as a condition of retaining exempt status (Schacht 2010a). In addition, universities must ensure that technology transfer arrangements do not jeopardize their tax exempt status and that terms and provisions reflect reasonable, fair value, market conditions. Universities also can be as concerned about having been taken advantage of and missing out on a financially lucrative opportunity as they have been criticized for overvaluing intellectual property and under-appreciating that most university innovations are early stage, of generally unknown usefulness, high risk, and very expensive to take to market (Nilsson 2006; Mowery et al. 2004; Schacht 2010a, b).