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
