University ownership destroys academic/industry collaboration by creating licensing standoffs and patent litigation

[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]

University ownership and assertion of patent rights drives apart academic collaborators. Why help out that research at university X when all the new things end up owned by X? It’s even worse for company interactions. Some companies tell their scientists not to read the academic literature–doing so just poisons their well, setting up a claim of willful infringement if the company scientists happen to use something that appears in a publication but which the university–without any notice–has gone off and obtained a patent on. In one case, a major Bay Area company pulled its financial support from a university’s school of engineering. “Why are you pulling out?” the dean complained. “Well you just designated our main competitor as your preferred company partner–why shouldn’t we pull out?” Pipelining IP to just one company is a sure way to turn all the others in the same field against you, or at least have them be wary. If they aren’t wary, that’s a good sign that they don’t think your research is worth a bean and they are involved only to compete from rescuing the best and the brightest from your swamp. But no one talks much about whether university research is relevant to anything technical, let alone innovative, that might be of value to companies or professionals. A few studies, such as those by Stanford’s John Ioannidis, argue that most academic clinical studies are flawed, and even when they are not flawed, they are mostly not clinically useful. That’s a big elephant for this room, too. University ownership of inventions and patents, tied to a default practice of offering (or at least hoping to offer) exclusive licenses creates a stand-off with the company world and a strange relationship with other research organizations. Look at CRISPR–a multi-million dollar battle between UC and MIT over patent rights. What a waste–more like gangs fighting for territory than an effort to create a platform for, er, broad use.