Colorado’s emergence as a technological powerhouse hit new heights last year with a CHIPS and Science Act award of $90 million — a federal investment that will draw millions more to semiconductor manufacturing in our state. The award is a savvy investment in our high-performing tech ecosystem, in which universities, federal labs, startups and industry work together to drive innovation.
A key to this investment is the intentional manner of how intellectual property rights will be assigned to various partners to ensure maximum participation and impact.
Surprisingly in December, the U.S. Department of Energy made an announcement that threatens this proven model of success. Regarding nuclear technologies that benefit from federal funding, a new policy states that technology be made “freely available to the public with few or no intellectual property restrictions.” This directive, which could be extended beyond nuclear power, undermines a principle that has driven American innovation for decades: that universities, federal labs and similar research institutions should get to own and license patents on their discoveries.
The Department of Energy’s move will hinder American innovation. Additionally, from the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s march-in framework to the National Science Foundation’s proposed intellectual property options, we are concerned there is a growing theme to dismantle a system that works — and works particularly well in Colorado.
The Centennial State is home to more than 30 federally funded research labs that support 17,000 jobs and contribute $2.6 billion a year to the state economy.
We encourage policymakers to instead foster state and national innovation by protecting intellectual property rights and shifting decision-making power from the bureaucracy to inventors themselves.
Our current, successful system for bringing new inventions to market stems from the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which gave research institutions the right to own and license their federally funded discoveries. This simple framework aligns everyone’s interests: scientists pursue breakthroughs, institutions earn money from licensing patents to fund further research, and companies take the financial risks required to transform lab discoveries into real-world products.
The model reversed decades of stagnation, in which patents for government-funded inventions simply gathered dust because no company would invest in technologies without secure intellectual property.
The results of the Bayh-Dole system are all around us as Colorado labs are engines of entrepreneurship across industry sectors. For example, federally funded research at the University of Colorado has spawned dozens of companies including Longpath Technologies, which makes systems to cut methane emissions at oil and gas fields. Federally funded research at Colorado State University has led to partnerships with industry giants like Caterpillar to develop ways of decarbonizing heavy industry, and patents that have been commercially licensed in technologies from chemistry to biotech to computer science.
And yet, wide-ranging threats to this system persist. The Department of Energy’s memo on nuclear technologies undermines the patent protections needed to bring promising developments in nuclear science that affect medicine, energy and defense to market.
The agency seems to believe, erroneously, that terminating intellectual property rights will somehow benefit society. In fact, doing so will eliminate private investment in these technologies, ensuring that they never become widespread. For context, venture funding in the Denver-Boulder region hit roughly $5.5 billion last year, more than double the 2020 amount.
Separately, the National Science Foundation recently proposed intellectual property guidelines that could allow the government to strip companies of their patent rights if their inventions once received federal funding — directly overstepping Bayh-Dole. If adopted, the policy would seriously deter private investment in new technologies.
The benefits of robust intellectual property rights extend far beyond economics. When COVID-19 hit, Colorado State University’s Infectious Disease Research Center quickly pivoted to develop SolaVAX, a promising vaccine technology that drew $3.1 million in National Institutes of Health funding.
Policies that discourage commercialization of new technologies also discourage this kind of rapid mobilization to meet urgent national priorities. Under our current system, strong ties between research institutions and industry enable quick responses to emerging challenges.
Supporting federally funded research is also critical to strengthening national security. While quantum computing researchers at NIST in Boulder race to stay ahead of Chinese competitors, policies that protect intellectual property assure innovators that their high-risk efforts can pay off with real-world impact. The government’s stated goal of reducing dependence on foreign-made semiconductors requires policies that encourage, not hinder, private investment and industry collaboration.
For our most cutting-edge industries to continue to thrive, our political leaders must act. We need to fund domestic inventors and research institutions, while safeguarding their intellectual property rights.
The new administration should avoid policies that weaken the Bayh-Dole system. With global competition intensifying in everything from quantum computing to clean energy, we can’t afford to handicap our country’s most advanced research.
Dan Powers of Louisville is the executive director of CO-LABS, which is a 501(c)3 nonprofit, nonpartisan consortium of federally funded scientific laboratories, research universities and colleges, business leaders and economic development experts.
The Colorado Sun is a nonpartisan news organization, and the opinions of columnists and editorial writers do not reflect the opinions of the newsroom. Read our ethics policy for more on The Sun’s opinion policy. Learn how to submit a column. Reach the opinion editor at opinion@coloradosun.com.
Follow Colorado Sun Opinion on Facebook.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Opinion: Colorado has been a leader in innovation, but new Trump policy will undermine those efforts )
Also on site :