p. 2 
Letter to Dr. Fredrickson 
Department policy carries the proviso that an Institution's 
"ownership" in all inventions is conditional. Since one of those 
conditions is public interest considerations, I see no difficulty in 
placing patent applications on recombinant DNA research in a 
special category - one to be dealt with by special procedures. 
What should these be and what should they achieve? My proposal, 
outlined below, tries to deal with what can be achieved in this 
country and with what can be marketed in this country by foreign 
concerns. 
1. Continue the present policy of encouraging Universities and 
other Institutions to apply for patents for inventions stemming from 
research carried out in their laboratories by their personnel. Patents 
dealing with recombinant DNA methodology (cloning, joining methods, 
novel hosts and vectors, etc. , ) must first be cleared through the 
Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee or whatever replaces it if 
it becomes "federalized". 
2. Require that all licensing negotiations, whether for exclusive 
or non-exclusive licenses, be carried out jointly between the Institutions, 
the potential licensee's and the Committee's designates. During such 
negotiations considerations and demands for safety could be examined and 
negotiated. This would include Government supervision for compliance 
since University licensing group* could never manage the safety issue 
on its own. 
3. Require that patent application be made only after the relevant 
results and procedures have been published in the scientific literature. 
Such publication would prevent foreign patent applications from being 
filed; moreover, since some proof of priority for the idea and under- 
taking of the research leading to the invention is needed to protect a 
patent application, I can't see why there should be objection to requiring 
publication prior to filing. I suppose one could also consider that where 
the publication is accompanied by a statement indicating intention to 
file a patent application, that would take precedence for establishing 
priority for purposes of the patent application. 
4. Develop a formula returning a portion of the royalties from 
licensing arrangements to the Institution making the patent applica- 
tion. I have no idea what an appropriate fraction of the royalties 
should be but it should be enough (20 to 30%? ) to be an incentive and 
reward for the Institution's efforts and achievements. The remainder 
could then be deposited in some fund to be used for supporting further 
research throughout the country or even for contractual arrangements 
for investigations on the hazards. In that way the benefits of the re- 
search would be distributed to all scientists; this seems appropriate 
since the research leading to the invention generally grows out of and 
depends upon the work of scientists elsewhere. 
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