27 Jul Bayh-Dole Coalition Responds to OSTP’s New Report — And Offers Advice
WASHINGTON, D.C. (July 27, 2026) — Today, the Bayh-Dole Coalition responded to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s release of Science: A New Golden Age — and seconded the report’s recommendations to expedite grant reviews, reduce red tape, and provide researchers with long-term, fully funded grants. Other proposals, like giving federal grants and contracts directly to scientists rather than the institutions they work for, appear problematic, as it’s not clear how they would make the R&D system more effective and could undermine the commercialization of resulting inventions that drive our economy.
“The report rightly recognizes that federally funded scientific research is essential to America’s economic growth, national security, and scientific leadership,” said Joseph P. Allen, executive director of the Bayh-Dole Coalition. “As the Administration considers and seeks input from critical stakeholders in the system on these and other reforms, we encourage it to build on the decentralized university research and technology transfer system established by the Bayh-Dole Act. This system — which has been praised and copied around the world — enables our private sector, particularly American startups and small companies, to license federally funded breakthroughs, further develop them, and bring them to market.”
The Coalition also supports empowering scientists to pursue breakthrough discoveries. The best way to do so is to strengthen the decentralized university technology transfer system established under Bayh-Dole. Shifting commercialization authority directly to individual scientists, rather than technology transfer experts with decades of experience, would burden researchers with responsibilities outside their expertise and has proven much less successful than our current system when tried in other countries.
The Coalition commends efforts to improve our federal R&D system at a time when we face unprecedented challenges from rivals like China that are determined to do whatever is necessary to eclipse our lead in technology. Still, we must not throw out the critical elements of our system that helped us successfully meet similar challenges in the past, such as the proven Bayh-Dole system, which turns government-funded discoveries into useful products that grow our economy and improve lives here and abroad. Earlier this year, the Bayh-Dole Coalition wrote to President Trump identifying several agency actions under the previous administration that unnecessarily burden commercialization of federally funded inventions and discourage private-sector investment. These include the Department of Energy’s nuclear energy policy, which forbids patenting inventions in favor of publishing them and making them accessible to foreign rivals. The National Institutes of Health also proposed, and recently finalized, licensing guidelines that require industry licensees to submit continuous and cumbersome access planning reports on their commercialization plans in direct violation of the Bayh-Dole Act. Removing such barriers — all of which are in effect or still pending — would reduce bureaucratic burdens while strengthening America’s innovation system.
“America’s continued technological leadership depends on preserving the Bayh-Dole framework that empowers universities, entrepreneurs, and private-sector partners to turn lab discoveries into real products,” Allen said. “The Bayh-Dole Coalition encourages the administration to maintain that system as it implements the many positive goals of this report.”
About the Bayh-Dole Coalition: The Bayh-Dole Coalition is a 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.