Release date: April 18, 2024
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Welcome to The Transfer Files. This is your insider's look at how federal laboratories bring groundbreaking technologies to market. In every episode, we'll bring you insights and expertise from the expansive world of tech transfer.
In the 1970s, Joe Allen was a congressional staffer when an issue walked into his office that would shape his career for decades. As a staffer in Senator Birch Bayh’s office, he played a pivotal role in developing the Bayh-Dole Act, also known as the Patent and Trademark Law Amendments Act. Passed in 1980, this law enables businesses, universities and nonprofits to own inventions created through federally funded research.
Now, 44 years later, Joe continues to defend the Bayh-Dole Act as the executive director of the Bayh-Dole Coalition. In this episode of The Transfer Files, Joe gives a firsthand account of how the legislation made it through Congress, the opposition it has faced and the impact this policy has on technology transfer and the U.S. economy.
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In This Episode:
[01:31] Joe was an English and history major, and he was on a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee before working for Senator Bayh.
[02:02] He was a research assistant, and he handled correspondence.
[03:21] Joe shares how he sat in on a patent meeting and discovered that if there was any federal funding on an invention the patent was taken away from the inventor and the idea was made freely available.
[04:05] In 1970, Innovation was needed and this was a big problem across the government.
[04:47] Joe did research and discovered this was a big issue. Senators Bayh and Dole became interested on a bipartisan level.
[06:23] He ended up staffing this project.
[06:58] At first they didn't realize what a big deal it was, but they discovered it was a fundamental policy that was harming America because nothing was coming out of billions of dollars of taxpayer funding.
[07:08] We were literally giving our research away to our competitors.
[07:33] For people just starting their careers, you never know when your big break is going to happen and sometimes it's unexpected.
[07:43] If you're lucky, doing your best can transform your life.
[08:11] Forty-five years later, Joe is still working on the same issues.
[08:36] Companies weren't going to fund research in a university or federal laboratory, because the government would take away their patents. This segregated the public and private networks.
[09:00] Out of 28,000 government inventions less than 5% were licensed.
[10:53] Senator Bayh had a personal cause, because his wife was going through breast cancer treatment. This was people's lives that mattered.
[11:53] Challenges included people who truly believed that if the government funds research, it should be available for free.
[12:27] Universities and small companies were the most harmed by the previous laws.
[14:51] Amending Bayh-Dole to include big business was going to be the kiss of death.
[16:20] Joe shares behind the scenes action of getting the bill passed.
[20:51] Jimmy Carter signed the act on the last possible day.
[21:23] They put the regulations under the Office of Management and Budget, so Norm Lacker could work on it.
[21:44] The implementing regulations weren't in place until 1982. The whole process was anything but a slam dunk.
[22:25] The Federal Technology Transfer Act was originally part of Bayh-Dole.
[30:15] We should be very optimistic about the future, because this theory works. It's more important than ever for the private sector to partner with Federal Labs and universities.