In 1980, the U.S. Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act so that universities could patent and exclusively license inventions derived from federally-funded research. Proponents argued that this was necessary to make sure that valuable university inventions are commercialized. Opponents argued that university scientists have long been adept at transferring their technologies to private firms without this law and that emphasizing the university role in this process would distort academic institutions that encourage publication and sharing of knowledge.

Since 1980, the volume of university patenting and licensing has soared. This issue summarizes recent research that has attempted to understand the impact of this law after two decades.

Jerry Thursby and Marie Thursby present a review of empirical research addressed to four questions:
- Would technologies be transferred in the absence of Bayh-Dole?
- Are technology transfer offices "profit centers"?
- Does licensing restrict dissemination of academic research?
- Have financial incentives from licensing diverted faculty from basic to more applied research?
[Reproduced from Science]

Paul David argues that the critical policy issue is the balance between the institutions of Open Science and the institutions of intellectual property. This suggests that the evaluation of policy such as Bayh-Dole needs to consider the full impact of this policy on subtle features of these institutions, especially on early stage scientific research.

Ajay Agrawal and Rebecca Henderson look in detail at how MIT researchers actually transfer knowledge to the private sector including consulting, publishing, patenting and other means. Despite the surge in patenting, other channels of dissemination are still more important.

Andreas Panagopoulos explores a theoretical explanation why joint ventures between universities and private firms may not occur as frequently as might be expected: intellectual property rights may discourage joint ventures when spillovers are not great.

Saul Lach and Mark Schankerman find that university researchers appear to be strongly influenced by royalty rates. They conclude that "the design of intellectual property rights and other forms of incentives in academic institutions can have real effects on the direction of research."

Dan Elfenbein also finds that the structure of incentives in university licensing agreements affects behavior. Stronger incentives reduce the likelihood that contracts will be prematurely terminated, unless the licensee is a small firm. Then early termination is more likely.

Arvids Ziedonis summarizes the overall assessment of Bayh-Dole from his forthcoming book with Richard Nelson, David Mowery and Bhaven Sampat. The verdict is mixed:
- special encouragement for university patenting was not needed; greater patenting would have occurred without Bayh-Dole
- only limited disciplines have been affected by patenting so far
- but it is too early to tell if this upsurge in patenting and licensing has had a detrimental effect on the "culture" of research.