Media Contact: Kara Gavin 734-764-2220  Time for tech transfer
law to change? U-M doctor looks at history of Bayh-Dole, and
says yes  Supreme Court ruling on gene patenting, and modern
risks raised by industry/academic interaction, signal need for
change  ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The law that has helped medical
discoveries make the leap from university labs to the
marketplace for more than 30 years needs revising, in part to
ensure the American people benefit from science their tax
dollars have paid for, says a University of Michigan Medical
School physician and medical historian.  In a new commentary in
the New England Journal of Medicine, Howard Markel, M.D., Ph.D.,
director of the U-M Center for the History of Medicine, looks at
the fluke-ridden history of how the law known as Bayh-Dole
Technology Transfer Act was passed in 1980. The law made it much
easier for research findings made by academics to be patented,
licensed by companies and commercialized.  The haphazard history
of Bayh-Dole, and the issues and ris