TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER: Agencies' Rights to Federally Sponsored Biomedical Inventions
Abstract
The Bayh-Dole Act gives federal contractors, grantees, and cooperative agreement funding recipients the option to retain ownership rights to inventions they create as part of a federally sponsored research project and profit from commercializing them. The act also protects the governments interests, in part by requiring that federal agencies and their authorized funding recipients retain a license to practice the invention for government purposes. GAO examined (1) who is eligible to use and benefit from the governments license to federally funded biomedical inventions, (2) the extent to which the federal government has licenses to those biomedical inventions it procures or uses most commonly, and (3) the extent to which federal agencies and authorized federal funding recipients have actually used or benefited from these licenses. GAO focused its work on the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the Department of Defense (DOD), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jul 01, 2003
- Accession Number
- AD1179623
Entities
People
- Robin Nazzaro
Organizations
- United States Government Accountability Office