In article <32EC6E63.6AD97132 at house.med.und.ac.za> "Dr. Rob Miller" <rmiller at house.med.und.ac.za> writes:
>prices, as I was mostly funded by Glaxo). My point, however, was that
>it is my impression that most bioscience software is developed with grant
>funding, **then sold**...
Lots of people share your attitude that commercialization of
federally-funded research sounds like an ethical no-no.
However, in US law, that's not the intention of our government. The
most relevant law is probably the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980. It permits
("demands", according to some readings) university laboratories to
commercialize federally-funded results where possible. It is
principally concerned with patentable inventions, but can probably be
broadly interpreted as applying to tech transfer in general. There is
a body of other legislation over the past twenty years that makes
similar points.
--
- Sean Eddy, Ph.D.
- Dept. of Genetics, Washington University School of Medicine
- 660 S. Euclid Box 8232, St. Louis MO 63110, USA
- mailto://eddy@genetics.wustl.eduhttp://genome.wustl.edu/eddy
