27 Jan Bayh-Dole Coalition Releases Issue Brief on Harmful NIH Licensing Guidelines
WASHINGTON, D.C. (January 27, 2025) — Today, the Bayh-Dole Coalition released an issue brief to highlight the disastrous impact of new National Institutes of Health licensing guidelines for NIH-made inventions.
“The guidelines — specifically the requirement that prospective licensees explain to NIH how they’ll make any future products ‘available, affordable, acceptable, and sustainable’ — reimposes the bureaucratic micro-management that Congress ended when passing the Bayh-Dole Act,” warned Joseph P. Allen, Executive Director of the Bayh-Dole Coalition. “This will have a dire impact on the commercialization of potentially life saving inventions made at NIH.”
If companies rightly fear that NIH officials can revoke their licenses for failing to meet these arbitrary and ill-defined conditions so rival companies can copy their products, entrepreneurs will not license NIH inventions in the first place. This is a particularly dire threat to the innovative small businesses which drive American innovation.
“Our issue brief explains in detail how these guidelines would unravel America’s world-leading innovation system,” said Allen. “The new administration should immediately rescind the guidelines and work to ensure that private-sector firms are properly incentivized to turn NIH-funded discoveries into lifesaving drugs and devices that benefit all Americans as the Bayh-Dole Act intends.”
The issue brief is available here.
About the Bayh-Dole Coalition: The Bayh-Dole Coalition is a diverse group of innovation-oriented organizations and individuals committed to celebrating and protecting the Bayh-Dole Act, as well as informing policymakers and the public of its many benefits.
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