Advancing Tech Transfer Across the Globe | The Bayh-Dole Bulletin #30

The Bayh-Dole Coalition was recently honored by a State Department program that brought a delegation of South African university technology transfer officials for a tour of the United States. We were asked to speak to them about the Bayh-Dole system and immediately accepted.

Almost 20 years ago, I received a call from the National Institutes of Health, which was meeting with a delegation from South Africa. They were doing a worldwide tour looking for the best practices for integrating South Africa’s research universities into their economy. Several months later, I received an invitation to speak in South Africa, as they identified Bayh-Dole as the international best practice they wanted to adopt. I assumed that I was again speaking with university officials — but was shocked to learn, upon stumbling off the plane after a 17-hour flight, that I was the lead witness before their Parliament as it considered passing a Bayh-Dole law. The hearing went well, and the bill was enacted.

The State Department had brought over leaders from universities that are establishing their technology transfer programs and looking for advice. We discussed the importance of decentralizing technology management into their hands, as well as enlisting their faculty in identifying promising inventions. As at many of our schools decades ago, working with industry is a new concept to many academics, so we talked about how the environment changed once scientists saw they had an opportunity to turn their research into real-life products benefiting the public while continuing to publish scientific papers on their work. We talked about the burning passion from the inventor, their research institution, and a private sector developer necessary to turn a promising idea into a product, and how difficult that journey can be. We also discussed how red tape, bureaucracy and, most importantly, greed can kill that passion.

The hour allotted for our talk flew by as the members of the South African delegation were highly engaged. It was inspiring to see how our model is being adopted abroad. While the Bayh-Dole Coalition often focuses on issues related to the law in our own country, spreading entrepreneurship, backed by a free enterprise economy and a strong patent system, is a universal concept. The world will be better off as that model spreads. Clearly, our new friends from South Africa shared that vision.