The Bayh—Dole Act at Twenty-Five Years: Looking Back, Taking Stock, Acting for the Future

This article catalogues and discusses challenges to the Bayh–Dole Act from a perspective broader than the legal, industrial or academic. Because the act is a Congressional enactment placed in the federal patent law and the author served for many years as Chief Counsel of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Intellectual Property and worked on the 1984 amendments to the Bayh–Dole Act, the perspective here is a political one. The author asks for a celebration of the act's twenty-fifth anniversary, and issues a call to action for those engaged in technology transfer to defend it.