Federal action key – Bayh-Dole clarification the only way to protect faculty inventors from university administrators

[Gerald, “How Bayh-Dole failed to protect faculty inventors (from university administrators),” Research Enterprise, 09/28/15, https://researchenterprise.org/2015/09/28/how-bayh-dole-failed-to-protect-faculty-inventors-from-university-administrators/, accessed 7/17/24, GDI-JCR]

There is no going back. The lost city is lost. But there is going forward, and not in the direction suggested by present policy and practice. We can open up faculty discovery and invention. Freedom to innovate will look like administrative disorder rather than protection of inventor rights. Freedom to innovate will appear to allow mistakes and missteps–and it will. Freedom to innovate will appear to leave things “sitting”–and it will, but those things will be free things. Freedom to innovate also greatly reduces university costs, administrative overhead, institutional conflicts of interest, institutional liability, and public dissonance over the role of the university. The university need not play the huckster, nor monopolist, nor speculator, nor bully to industry, nor play favorites, nor be process-bound, nor appear the untrustworthy self-promoter, nor get caught in bed with sketchy business partners.

Universities didn’t need federal law to chart their course. But now that they have fallen down the well, they do need help to get back out. Amend Bayh-Dole to protect faculty inventors and their rights. Get university administrators out of the picture until they are invited by faculty to assist. All that’s needed is to enforce the (f)(2) agreement and make it clear–as is the case for subcontracts in Bayh-Dole–that a university cannot obtain ownership of an invention made with federal support as a condition of the award. That’s the start of a new era of open innovation supported by federal grants to faculty at universities.