Current federal law allows universities to patent discoveries made with federal funding, but numerous empirical studies show that innovation is greater when researchers have more control over their own work.
I believe Emory held a patent on molnupiravir, one of the drugs that had some early success in treating COVID, that they licensed out in 2022.
If we eliminate the ability of universities to capture rights to inventions, does this lead to universities having fewer faculty in fields that could potentially patent useful inventions (computers, biotech-adjacent fields, etc)? After all if a corporate entity couldn't control patents generated by their employees, the whole world of VC-funded biotech would fall apart in a heartbeat. Universities have other priorities, obviously, and are probably not as efficient about all this as a startup biotech would be, but the same incentives seem to apply to some degree.
That's a great point. I just haven't seen the evidence that universities (on the whole) hire faculty on the basis of predicting who might be the once-in-a-lifetime person who comes up with a billion-dollar invention. Nor would universities need to do so--unlike VC firms that are singularly focused on finding unicorns, the typical university has a far-more-diversified business model that relies on a mix of undergrad tuition, alumni gifts, sports (sometimes), expensive masters degrees for which students can borrow $100k or more, government grants, philanthropic grants, and expensive executive education courses/certificates. Once in a lifetime, a university like Penn might get a windfall with a professor who made a billion-dollar discovery, but that hopefully isn't affecting their routine decisions.
I believe Emory held a patent on molnupiravir, one of the drugs that had some early success in treating COVID, that they licensed out in 2022.
If we eliminate the ability of universities to capture rights to inventions, does this lead to universities having fewer faculty in fields that could potentially patent useful inventions (computers, biotech-adjacent fields, etc)? After all if a corporate entity couldn't control patents generated by their employees, the whole world of VC-funded biotech would fall apart in a heartbeat. Universities have other priorities, obviously, and are probably not as efficient about all this as a startup biotech would be, but the same incentives seem to apply to some degree.
That's a great point. I just haven't seen the evidence that universities (on the whole) hire faculty on the basis of predicting who might be the once-in-a-lifetime person who comes up with a billion-dollar invention. Nor would universities need to do so--unlike VC firms that are singularly focused on finding unicorns, the typical university has a far-more-diversified business model that relies on a mix of undergrad tuition, alumni gifts, sports (sometimes), expensive masters degrees for which students can borrow $100k or more, government grants, philanthropic grants, and expensive executive education courses/certificates. Once in a lifetime, a university like Penn might get a windfall with a professor who made a billion-dollar discovery, but that hopefully isn't affecting their routine decisions.
Wow the amount Penn got is gobsmacking!