26 Apr Bayh-Dole Coalition Celebrates a Sustainable Future on World IP Day
WASHINGTON, D.C. (April 26, 2024) — Today, Executive Director of the Bayh-Dole Coalition Joseph P. Allen released the following statement to commemorate World Intellectual Property Day, which focuses this year on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):
“The 24th annual World Intellectual Property Day is a time to celebrate intellectual property rights. Every day, these legal safeguards advance science, innovation, and the global economy.
“This year, the World Intellectual Property Organization, which founded the day, is focusing its efforts on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The global community established this set of objectives in 2015 with the aim of achieving them by 2030. They include eradicating poverty and food insecurity while improving conservation, fighting climate change, and building resilient communities.
“These goals can only be achieved with robust intellectual property rights — like those provided by the Bayh-Dole Act, a 1980 law that made it possible for universities, non-profit research institutions, and startups to license their federally-funded discoveries to private companies for further development.
“The law paved the way for more than four decades of innovation. By empowering these federally-funded institutions to retain and license federally-funded patents, Bayh-Dole spurs the translation of basic research into real-world technologies every day — and has generated $1 trillion in GDP and 6.5 million jobs for the U.S. economy over the last 43 years.
“In recent years, we’ve seen Bayh-Dole-generated advancements in agriculture, climate engineering, renewable energy, and medicine. The law is integral to achieving the world’s sustainability goals, like the 17 SDGs put forward by the UN.
“To build on this progress, U.S. leaders must continue to protect the Bayh-Dole Act and reject policies that undermine it, like the Biden administration’s recent proposal to drastically reinterpret it. If they don’t, American inventors won’t be able to create the new green technologies we need for a sustainable future.”
The Bayh-Dole Coalition is a group of organizations and individuals committed to protecting the Bayh-Dole Act, as well as informing policymakers and the public of its many benefits.