Choice and open competition in a free market – they’re the
pillars on which the U.S. economy rests. Yet the very thing they
are designed to foster – innovation – is at risk, because the
process by which innovations come to market at universities
undermines open competition and inhibits inventor choice. The
federal government invests $30 billion per year in medical
research through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and
the stimulus added another $10 billion over two years. The
investment is designed to lead to innovations that can improve
the nation's health, increase productivity and drive down costs.
But the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, a law designed to cut through
bureaucracy and get these inventions into the marketplace
faster, has instead created another bottleneck that keeps that
innovation in the lab and out of the hands of the taxpayers who
paid for it. Prior to the enactment of Bayh-Dole, the U.S.
government had accumulated 28,000 patents, but only 5 percent
had been commercially licensed because of