Patent federally-owned

In October 2002, a US federal judge ruled that three generic companies had infringed on AstraZeneca s patent. However, a fourth company that has its own patent for coating the drug was cleared to market the drug in generic form. 

In 1977, when the above review was presented and published, the history of the s-triazine herbicides was already 25 years old, with the first synthesis of these chemicals completed in 1952. The filing of the first basic triazine patent case in Switzerland was on August 16, 1954, and the first commercial products appeared on the market in 1956, following the approval of simazine for use in corn by federal authorities in Switzerland on December 3, 1956. Several other agrochemical companies started immediately to work with their own s-triazine variations, using other radicals or amino-functions on the s-triazine ring. This further research was also briefly reviewed in Knusli s 1977 paper. 

Before accepting a license agreement under a university owned patent, check to see if the invention was made with federal funding (see Section VII -Impact of Federal Funding). 

The unique nature of federally funded R D, in addition to its size, makes this a special topic in its own right. A number of problems for commercialization and, therefore, innovation are similar to industrially supported research. However, a great many more problems are not related, including ownership of patent rights, goal-oriented programs not related to the commercial market, lack of incentives, questions as to the extent of government involvement, etc. 

Federal courts have determined that researchers may use patented materials and processes for noncommercial scientific inquiry, but that any research related to a possible commercial product constitutes a patent infringement. Hence, the originator may conduct R D activities on follow-on products, while all other competitors must wait until any relevant patents expire before beginning to develop their own (452). 

The 94 federal judicial districts are organized into 12 regional circuits, each of which has its own court of appeals. With the Federal Courts Improvement Act ("FCIA") of 1982 (167), the U.S. Congress created the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and vested it with exclusive jurisdiction over patent cases. One of its objectives in doing so was to promote uniformity in the area of patent law and diminish the uncertainty created by inconsistent application of the patent law among the regional circuits (168). The Federal Circuit also hears appeals of patent matters from the PTO, the Court of Federal Claims, and the ITC, as well as appeals of a variety of nonpatent matters. Matters involving issues of patent law make up a substantial portion of the Court s docket, and the Court is considered to have specialized expertise in the patent area. 

Satisfying the requirements of such statutes as the Toxic Substances Control Act, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act and the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act can consume a substantial portion of the seventeen-year patent term. While a company may try to keep new products as trade secrets until they are ready to be marketed, the failure promptly to file patent applications may allow competitors to obtain patents over similar inventions. The company would thereafter have to challenge such patents in court in order to market its own products. 

As many of us know, this is one side of a dialogue that has been in progress since we all were young. Like the phoenix arising from the ashes, this seemingly endless debate about who should own the patents arising from federally-funded research contracts reasserts itself into the public consciousness periodically. 

The fact that is hard to swallow is that in 1975 the United States government owned over 28,000 U. S. patents available for licensing, far more than anyone else about 1,200 of those 28,000 were licensed — about the same number as were licensed in 1963 when the federal government owned only 14,000 patents. Furthermore, for an average yearly value, computed for the years 1963 through 1975, the federal government has been filing well over 2,000 applications for patents every year. 

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