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Comment by azhenley | Hacker News Reader

Research funding in the US oddly doesn't seem to provide any rights to the IP to the taxpayers and only limited rights to the government, at least when it comes to the NSF and NIH (DoD research does seem to be different).

Disclaimer: I'm a researcher in the US.

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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh–Dole_Act

Is what gives universities IP rights and allows them to keep research closed. Top Five Fascist laws in the books.

Fascist seems like a pretty extreme overreaction.

Corporatized public institutions are clearly a fascist move. Same goes for the public private partnerships in common wealth countries.

So anyone who implemented a PPI in the MHS is a fascist? Great way to devalue the term.

You are putting words in my mouth, this isn't what I said.

I called Bayh-Dole act a fascist law, because it encourages the privatization of public research. It is literally a gift from the public to the corporation and encourages public organizations to participate in corporate behavior which is antithetical to their actual stated missions.

The PPP (public private partnerships) in common wealth countries are aimed at achieving

* less oversight of government activity and accountability

* union busting

under the guise of efficiency and cost reductions. And are anti-democratic. Fascism is the description we give to a certain type of corporate-statist behavior. The wonderful (facetious) effect this has is that is imperceptible to a lot of folks while slowly shifting the ideology to the right.

I am not calling people national socialists. I never called a person a fascist. Bayh-Dole was probably well intentioned but the result has been the exclusion of public research for the public good. It stifles more innovation than it encourages. What term would you use?

I've always wondered why grant funded projects are allowed to be patented, do you think just preventing the IP is enough?

I've seen Mariana Mazzucato suggest the government as VC in that they get a portion of the profits from their grant projects, but then I wonder how they could safely regulate their own funding revenue?

I'm no expert in the area of research IP and govt funding, but my interpretation so far has been that the government provides the funding with the expectation that the research will ultimately improve society (even if it is through a for-profit business). It also values the training of graduate students with the funding.

But the opposite happens because the same scientists own IP and run the study to determine its worth. So we know less and waste more than having done nothing.

Allowing the university to get the IP is another way to fund projects. If the university didn't get any of the IP, grants would have to be larger to fund all costs.

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