Another thought on the Kauffman vs. University tech transfer squabble

This morning I saw this note for an upcoming webinar from the Licensing Executives Society (http://lesusacanada.org/webinar/aug10). By way of disclosure, I’m a member of the LES (a "Certified Licensing Professional" no less) and have spoken at a number of LES meetings over the years.

The topic of the webinar is the current and ongoing debate stemming from the Kauffman Foundation’s very public appeal to the U.S. government (via a memo to the Dept of Commerce) that federal law be changed such that when an invention is made using federal grant monies at a university that the patent rights be owned by the inventor(s) personally rather than by the university where the research takes place. Kauffman’s rationale is that universities have done a poor job of commercializing the research that is funded by federal grants and that individual inventors would do a better job. I’ve actually gone on record in this blog as saying I wouldn’t mind such a system. Universities have (expectedly) defended themselves by pointing to their collective track record since 1980 (when the law was changed to allow university ownership in the first place).

– Dean Stell

Full Story: http://technologycommercialization.blogspot.com/2010/08/another-thought-on-kauffman-vs.html