14 
A number of commentators disagreed with the action of Stanford 
and the University of California in seeking to patent such inventions. 
Specifically, several commentators believed that those universities were 
ill-advised to seek patents when contributions to research advancement in 
this area were shared by a number of institutions and investigators. These 
are important considerations in the determination of patent rights. How- 
ever, the appropriate forums for adjudicating rights to patent inventions 
are the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the courts. The Patent Office 
reviews all patent applications to determine whether the claims for the 
new inventions are attributable solely to the claimant. The NIH recognizes 
its responsibility to provide the Patent Office with all relevant research 
information on recombinant DNA, in order that review of claims can proceed 
with full knowledge of prior research results in this area. 
The commentators did not believe patents to be an impediment to the 
free flow of information. There may be special problems posed by the 
Freedom of Information Act which will influence the administration of 
patents in the future. For the present, however, it would appear that 
the Act and the patent agreement do not necessarily conflict. The 
commentators supported the IPAs and urged that recombinant DNA research 
inventions not be excluded from them. 
When the Guidelines were released in June, a key public issue was 
their extension to the rest of the public and private sectors. All com- 
mentators whose views were solicited in 1976 agreed that there must be 
standards to govern the conduct of recombinant DNA research and that the 
NIH Guidelines could provide the standards for such research nationally. 
[ 16 ] 
