Column: Bipartisan Bayh-Dole Act puts science to work, for everyone

Advanced countries have long faced a scientific challenge: How can policymakers encourage university labs — where academics perform research to expand scientific knowledge — to collaborate with private companies, which are mostly interested in creating real-world products?

The United States was one of the first nations to crack the code. The bipartisan Bayh-Dole Act, which Congress passed in 1980, gave federally funded university labs the right to keep the patents on their discoveries. Previously, the federal government had retained those rights.

The impact was profound. The law incentivized universities to license their intellectual property to the private sector in return for royalty payments. Companies gained access to a steady stream of early-stage but promising discoveries, which they could then further develop.

At the University of Hawaii, where I work in the Office of Innovation and Commercialization, our federally funded research labs make breakthrough discoveries every year. We have world-renowned programs in astronomy, medicine, oceanography, genetics and tropical agriculture, to name just a few areas of expertise.

Thanks to Bayh-Dole, these breakthroughs often lead to new companies and products. Spin-off businesses from the University of Hawaii include Adnoviv, a Honolulu firm selling sensors for energy-efficient smart buildings. Another, KinetiCor, develops technology to improve the clarity of MRI images. And another, Spectrum Photonics, creates sensor systems to detect trace-level chemical compounds. In total, the University of Hawaii has licensed more than 150 discoveries.

The scientists and founders behind many of these companies are helping to save our planet, better our health, and improve our way of life. They are also providing jobs and tax revenue to our state. As the COVID-19 pandemic has made clear, Hawaii needs a more resilient and diversified economy, combined with more living-wage jobs.

Of course, the nationwide impact of Bayh-Dole is even bigger. Between 1996 and 2017, the law facilitated university collaborations that led to $1.7 trillion in economic output, almost 6 million jobs, and 14,000 start-ups. The resulting products range widely, from a once-a-day pill for HIV to high-definition televisions to Google’s original search algorithm. Two of our COVID-19 vaccines are based on messenger RNA technology pioneered at the University of Pennsylvania.

Despite this resounding success, some policymakers in Washington, D.C., want to undermine the law. They’re urging the federal government to use the Bayh-Dole act’s “march in” provision to effectively revoke some patents as a means to control drug prices.

The law does allow for the federal government to seize and relicense patents — but only in very limited circumstances, like when a company has paid to license patent rights but refuses to perform additional research or development.

Congress never intended the march-in provision to be used as a price-control tool. In fact, the bill’s original sponsors, Sens. Birch Bayh and Bob Dole, wrote in 2002 that they “did not intend that government set prices on resulting products.”

Twisting the law’s intent would disrupt the tremendous flow of research it has fostered. We know this because the government tried price controls once before.

In 1989, the National Institutes of Health set pricing standards for medicines derived from federally funded research. As a result, the number of companies willing to develop products based on licensed NIH patents plummeted. The Clinton administration repealed the requirement in 1995 because of its discouraging effect on medical innovation.

If policymakers reinterpret the law to allow price controls now, it will undermine the purpose of Bayh-Dole, and end our odyssey of U.S. innovation.

Protecting the law, on the other hand, will spur further job creation in Hawaii and across the nation, bolstering our role as a global leader in technological innovation.

Steve Auerbach is the director of the Office of Technology Transfer at the University of Hawaii.