If anything is a “disgrace” it is the combination of arrogance and ignorance in many of these comments.

Some clarifications:

1) I am unaware (and I study this) of ANY lawsuit brought against a university for infringing a patent in the course of doing basic research. (OK there is one, in which a disgruntled professor sued a university he had left because he had created a HUGE machine that was very useful and that he used to earn piles of research money. When he left on bad terms and went to another university, the first one refused to let him take the machine with him. Turned out he somehow legitimately owned a patent on that machine and sued the university, and won. See Duke v. Madey. This situation is a far far cry from what some posters above think is happening — this myth that university researchers are cowering in their offices while lawyers threaten them with lawsuits.) University researchers doing research are willfully, blissfully ignorant of patents that might effect their work. And so far no company wants the horrible PR that would result from changing that.

2) If government money is used to make an invention at a university, the university MUST consider patenting and commercializing the invention, and if it does not, it must give the government the option to do so. This is the Bayh-Dole Act, an economic development law passed in 1980 to try to boost American competitiveness in the global marketplace. So the poster who made the statement that if there is government funding, the invention should be somehow “freely available”, is simply ignorant.

3) Universities exist to generate and propagate knowledge. They do that by teaching, doing research, writing books and articles, and for land grant universities, county extension offices. But they also do it by seeking to have inventions made in their labs, developed into products. New medical devices, drugs, and diagnostic tests based on university research are good things that serve the public good.

America is a capitalist country, for anyone who forgot that. This means two things:
a) these new products — like every other product — are made available to the public via the marketplace. Yes, you have to buy them. Is there other stuff in America that you get for free? Think, people! (note, you have to buy the other ways to access university research — you have to buy books and journals in which the research is made public, and a university education is not free either!)

b) Medical products in particular are very expensive and risky to develop. For a new drug, $200million (that is every step goes perfect; the average, counting failures, is $850 million!) over about 15 years. That is from Day 1 until you start actually selling a product. The government of America does NOT invest money in drug development (with some small small exceptions). Nope, this money comes from the private sector. Now no sane human being is going to make that kind of investment unless there is a chance to make a ton of money at the end. So when they examine the investment opportunity, what do they look for? You got it — whether there is (or is potential for) broad patent protection available around the idea for the drug. No patent protection, no investment…NO DRUG.

c) Once the drug is brought to market, the public can benefit from it. Now initially, there is a limited time during which the people who have taken risk – who have paid for all the development, can get their money back and more. (again, this is capitalism, and the investors made the investment EXACTLY for that purpose.). So new drugs are expensive. For a while. Then the patent expires and the drug becomes generic. And then the public can continue to benefit, just more cheaply now.

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OK I wrote too much.

But please people, stop reacting to stuff before you understand what is going on!! Ask questions!! THINK!

The combination of ignorance and passion is the most dangerous thing in the world.