Healthy Skepticism Library item: 18407

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Electronic Source

Silverman E
Patent Ownership And Federally Funded Research
Pharmalot 2010 Jun 29
http://www.pharmalot.com/2010/06/patent-ownership-and-federally-funded-research-2/

Full text:

Who owns patents that are generated by federally funded research? To help answer the question, the US Supreme Court has asked the US Solicitor General to offer an opinion (see the docket).
The case at hand pits Stanford University against Roche over HIV test kits. The drugmaker is fighting Stanford, which sued Roche in 2005 for patent infringement over technology to detect HIV levels blood using PCR, or polymerase chain reaction. A federal appeals court ruled last September that Stanford lacked standing to sue Roche for patent infringement.
Roche claims it is a co-owner of the patent because one of the original researchers transferred his patent rights to Cetus, which the drugmaker later purchased. In a recent brief, Roche argues the Bayh-Dole Act “does not alter a co-inventor’s right to assign his shared interests in an invention” and that “despite numerous requests, Stanford has never produced the actual funding agreement with the federal government that allegedly bears upon the inventions at issue in this case.”
In its petition filed in March, Stanford asked the court to decide whether a university’s patent rights “can be terminated unilaterally by an individual inventor through a separate agreement purporting to assign the inventor’s rights to a third party.”