Hon. William Matthew Byrne, Jr. Chair
This op-ed originally appeared in the July 3, 2017 edition of USA Today.
China is not manipulating its currency to our detriment, and NAFTA is a good thing for the U.S. economy. But Donald Trump has been right in his basic observation — as both candidate and president — that we need to do more to address our country’s trade deficit, how other countries "game" international trade, and how American jobs move offshore. Trump may not realize it but he could advance his “Buy American and Hire American” goals by activating a policy tool already buried in U.S. patent law.
Year in and year out, the federal government has spent tens of billions of dollars supporting scientific and technological research — for example, more than $131 billion in 2015 alone. Before 1980, federal agencies had different policies on inventions resulting from this federally funded research, with most of them reserving any patent rights to the federal government. That meant there was a vast trove of inventions collecting dust in government files: As of 1980, there were 28,000 patents held by the government this way — and fewer than 4% had been licensed for commercial use. While many of those were patents on military technology — and shouldn’t be licensed — there was clearly underutilization of a vast technological portfolio.
Read the full op-ed here >>
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