Government Taking a Cut of University Royalties Would Threaten Bayh-Dole's ROI

"First of all, the government isn't funding R&D like the private sector. Federal research is primarily focused on furthering the frontiers of science or meeting agency mission needs. Before the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980, very little was commercialized from the billions of dollars funded by Washington. But Bayh-Dole changed that, not by altering agency research but by decentralizing technology management out of Washington, relying on the incentives of the patent system."

""I think universities, who are getting all this money," Lutnick replied. "The scientists get the patents, the universities get the patents and the funder of $50 billion, the U.S. government, you know what we get? Zero." "In business," he continued, "if I gave them 100% of their money, I would get half the profits, with the scientists. So I think if we fund it and they invent a patent, the United States of America taxpayer should get half the benefit.""

A proposal to require the United States government to receive half the benefits from patents arising from federally funded research would reallocate returns from universities and inventors to taxpayers. Federal research primarily advances scientific frontiers and meets agency missions rather than mirroring private-sector R&D incentives. The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 decentralized technology management and created incentives for inventors and institutions to commercialize discoveries without increasing federal spending. Universities and scientists pursue commercialization largely using institutional resources and patent incentives. Claiming half the profits would undermine those incentives and is likely to impair innovation more than produce reliable revenue.

Read at IPWatchdog.com | Patents & Intellectual Property Law