Time for tech transfer law to change? U-M doctor looks at history of Bayh-Dole and says yes

Supreme Court ruling on gene patenting, and modern risks raised by industry/academic interaction, signal need for change

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The law that has helped medical discoveries make the leap from university labs to the marketplace for more than 30 years needs revising, in part to ensure the American people benefit from science their tax dollars have paid for, says a University of Michigan Medical School physician and medical historian.

In a new commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine, Howard Markel, M.D., Ph.D., director of the U-M Center for the History of Medicine, looks at the fluke-ridden history of how the law known as Bayh-Dole Technology Transfer Act was passed in 1980. The law made it much easier for research findings made by academics to be patented, licensed by companies and commercialized.