"March-In" Isn't Enough: All Government-Funded Research Belongs In The Public Domain

Earlier this year, William Smith writes at the Pioneer Institute, "[t]he federal government announced the formation of a working group to 'develop a framework for the implementation of the march-in provision of the Bayh-Dole Act.'" Smith thinks it's a bad idea -- the title of his piece is "University Science Research Is Under Threat."

The very simplified version:

Under the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act, universities can use taxpayer money to do research, then patent any useful results and make bank on their discoveries by licensing those patents to commercial entities.

The "march-in" provision says that...