Freeing the Good Stuff From University Labs

netbuzz writes "University research labs are not supposed to be like Vegas: What happens in them is not supposed to stay there. A nonprofit from the Kauffman Innovation Network launching yesterday at DEMO 07 aims to free the fruits of academic research that would otherwise sit trapped on university shelves. Bonus: the site translates academic-speak into English.

Comments

Already happening

[cfulmer]

I'm a lawyer who (among other things) advises startups who want to license discoveries from universities. There is already a thriving market in such research, thanks in large part to the Bayh-Dole act, which allows universities to exploit inventions funded by the US government. The gov't gets a non-exclusive right to practice the invention (or have it practiced for the government) and there are a few other relatively minor restrictions. Because of this, Universities have been mining their research for years. Especially in the biochem and biotech industries, the vegas-like attitude does not exist. Quite the opposite -- researchers typically now conduct their research with an eye toward its commercial practicability. Before Bayh-Dole, this rarely happened.

Bayh-Dole Act is the first door/barrier

[Fysiks Wurks]

The Bayh-Dole Act ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh-Dole_Act ) confers univeristies the IP rights to their discoveries.