Law Commons^™

Serious Flaw Of Employee Invention Ownership Under The Bayh-Dole Act In Stanford V. Roche: Finding The Missing Piece Of The Puzzle In The German Employee Invention Act, Toshiko Takenaka

Articles

This article argues that the current Bayh-Dole Act is incomplete because the Act fails to provide a mechanism for contractors to secure the ownership of federally funded inventions from their employees. Part I of this Article discusses this flaw in the current Bayh-Dole Act, highlighted by Stanford v. Roche, and argues that a historical accident resulted in this flaw due to Congress's failure to pass a series of bills based on the German EIA. Passages in the Bayh-Dole Act suggest that the Act assumes a transfer by operation of law to secure the ownership of federally funded inventions through …

The Aftermath Of Stanford V. Roche: Which Law Of Assignments Governs?, Sean M. O'Connor

Articles

The discovery and commercialization of biotechnology innovations often rely on collaborations between universities and for-profit firms. In the United States, the federal government funds much of university life sciences research and, under the Bayh-Dole Act, has some rights to research arising from that funding.

Two important strands of invention ownership issues in this web of collaboration arose under litigation that culminated in the recent United States Supreme Court decision Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University v. Roche Molecular Systems, Inc. (“Stanford v. Roche” or “Stanford”). The first is the question of whether Bayh-Dole …