Introduction 
I am pleased to be with you today to discuss the National Institutes 
of Health's perspectives on patent policy. I will deal first with 
patent policy as it relates to biomedical research generally, and then 
discuss a specific patent policy issue — recombinant DNA inventions 
developed with the help of NIH funds. 
General Department Patent Policy 
Under current DHEW patent regulations, invention rights to discov- 
eries developed under the Department's research support are normally 
allocated in either of two ways: 
First, the Department may enter into an Institutional Patent 
Agreement (IPA) with a university or other nonprofit organization that 
has set up mechanisms for administering patents on inventions, 
o In 1968, the present IPA's replaced agreements developed by the 
Department in the 1950' s. These earlier agreements proved to be 
non-uniform and, in some instances, inconsistent. The legal basis 
for the establishment of the IPA program does not rest on specific 
statutory authority but rather on the general authority of the 
Secretary to prescribe regulations and set the terms and conditions 
for grants and contracts. 
o The IPA offers the institution the first option to own all inventions 
made in performance of Department grants subject to a number of 
conditions deemed necessary to protect the public interest. 
[Appendix B — 245] 
