THE UPJOHN COMPANY 
KALAMAZOO. MICHIGAN 40001 
TELEPHONE (« 10 * 3g5_7544 
September 29, 1976 
pharmaceutical research 
AND DEVELOPMENT 
OUIce of 
O. I. WEIS0LAT 
Vic9 Fretideof 
Donald S. Fredrickson, M.D., Director 
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare 
National Institutes of Health 
Bethesda, Maryland 20014 
Dear Dr. Fredrickson: 
We appreciate being consulted, by your letter of September 7 to Dr. Joe 
Grady, for our views on HEW patent policy and practices as they may relate 
to inventions arising from recombinant DNA research. The issues you have 
raised are pertinent, timely, and important. We have given them serious 
thought, and I am responding not only for Dr. Grady but to offer the ma- 
jority opinion of my associates. 
As you are aware, current HEW patent policy and practices have been developed, 
sometimes quite slowly, over the past two decades toward the difficult objec- 
tive of a balanced approach to stimulating the practical development of in- 
ventions for the public good, providing appropriate incentive rewards to 
inventors, universities, and industry, and protecting the public from the 
misuse of the inventions. Many of us in government, academia, and industry 
have been involved from time to time in shaping the present arrangement. 
While none of us, I suppose, judge it perfect, most of us consider the pres- 
ent system reasonably balanced and, as you have indicated in your letter, 
fairly effective. 
In our opinion, recombinant DNA inventions should not be handled as special 
cases, either outside present HEW policy and practices or under some special 
modification thereof. We believe the present system will provide the best 
balance of considerations necessary to develop the field to the public's 
ultimate best good. Notwithstanding our conviction that exclusivity is a 
powerful stinulus to development, we regard the universities as well motivated 
and capable to decide whether to patent, dedicate, or otherwise disclose inven- 
tions and to determine, with HEW advice, various appropriate conditions and 
terms for patent licenses in differing situations. 
We are sensitive to the need for effective guidelines for recombinant DNA 
research and development, and we strongly support the spirit, intent and, 
with some exceptions of which you are aware, the substance of the NIH Guide- 
lines for that purpose. We believe the Guidelines, modified to some degree. 
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