A few weeks ago I wrote about a Statistics Canada report concerning commercialization of research in universities. The report was vague and began with the implication that a university’s capacity for creativity and innovation can be judged by its intellectual property holdings. Meaning, the number of patents and copyrights to its name. Earlier this week, Doug Lederman for Inside Higher Education described a report by the National Research Council (United States) concerning the merits of technology transfers between academia and industry. The prepublication version of the report is freely available here.The report is titled Managing University Intellectual Property in the Public Interest and uses the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act* in 1980 as its starting point. This Act paved the way for American universities to take ownership of the intellectual property which arose from publicly funded research, for the express purpose of facilitating commercial development and licensing of the work. The practice prior to Bayh-Dole placed ownership in the hands of the funding agencies and commercial development of university research was infrequent.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Universities and Commercialization (or Peanut Butter II) « Fair Duty
