Who owns an invention?
OCT 26, 2009
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.023787
USA Today : Ever since the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act , which gave federally funded university researchers the right to license their inventions as a way to spur innovation and economic growth, technology transfer offices have sprung up all over, with steady growth .In 1991, US universities filed 1,335 patents and received $130 million in royalties. In 2005, they filed 9,306 patents and received $1.8 billion in royalties.At some universities, the policy on who owns inventions created using university resources required researchers, at some future date, to “agree to assign” ownership rights to the university.But contracts researchers have with industry may be worded slightly differently and state an inventor “will assign and do hereby assign” his or her rights to the funder, which can lead to court cases arising over who owns the innovation rights. Related news story Painful lesson on patents Inside Higher Ed
© 2009 American Institute of Physics
