This created a decades-long drain on US tech innovation – universities are black holes where inventions go to die

[Gerald, “Inventors would own more, were it not for noncompliant Bayh-Dole practice,” Research Enterprise, 3/10/23, https://researchenterprise.org/2023/03/10/inventors-would-own-more-were-it-not-for-noncompliant-bayh-dole-practice/, accessed 7/17/24, GDI-JCR]

In my over 20 years in tech transfer, inventions of any use don’t go “into a black hole” if a university fails to demand ownership. Sure, they may not get used–but 95% of patented inventions don’t get used anyway. One should not have a shocked face. But even in this context, the university demand to own everything is an even bigger, blacker black hole.

Consider. Universities hold over 120,000 US patents they have acquired in the Bayh-Dole era from over 400,000 inventions they have claimed. Over 50,000 of these patents cite federal funding. These numbers are staggering. But where is the outputs? The new products, the economic development, the innovation? Universities won’t even report these outputs. Instead, they report proxies that just aren’t relevant–the number of inventions reported, the number of patents, the number of licenses. These metrics reflect the activity of licensing offices, but stop short of results. No one reports how many of those university inventions, patented or not, are actually being used. License deals don’t necessarily transfer any technology–they can be just rights speculation, much like a music label buying up rights to some band’s next album–getting those rights doesn’t mean the band is going to record a next album, but there’s money to be made speculating that they will, and it will be a monster if they all pull together as a team, as it were.

The stark reality is that university ownership is where inventions go to die. The black hole, around which swirls–slowly, at an administrative pace–the dust and gases of administrative red tape, patent paywalls, fussy compliance, and distractions about future money.