INTERAGENCY COMMITTEE ON RECOMBINANT DNA RESEARCH 
Summary Minutes of Meeting 
May 6, 1977 
National Institutes of Health 
Bethesda, Maryland 
The seventh meeting of the Interagency Committee took place on May 6 
at the National Institutes of Health. The meeting was chaired by 
Dr. Donald Fredrickson, Director of the NIH, whose staff briefly reviewed 
the current state of Federal legislative proposals concerning recombinant 
DNA activities. Senator Kennedy and Representative Rogers have intro- 
duced the Administration bill into their respective committees, and it 
is expected that both committees will report one bill by the end of. May. 
Institutional Patent Agreements 
An analysis of the NIH Institutional Patent Agreement (IPA), which had 
previously been distributed, was then discussed and each representative 
was asked to describe his agency's patent arrangements. 
It was learned that NSF has an IPA system similar to that of NIH, 
while the DoD negotiates patent agreements on a grant-by-grant basis. 
The VA has no extramural research so there is no relevant patent policy. 
USDA, ERDA, NSF, and DoD will be forwarding the comments of their 
patent experts to Dr. Fredrickson. 
Dr. Fredrickson also reported that he sent a memorandum on April 19, 1977, 
to HEW Secretary Califano describing the Interagency Committee discussions 
concerning the Commerce Department order on the accelerated processing 
of patent applications. 
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