UW's Upcoming Patent Problem

Well, well, well.

 ...Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick dropped another bombshell, this one on the academic-industrial complex. “Patents!” he exclaimed. “We have given tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions, to universities for them to do research and invent things. You know who owns the patents? The universities. So we are going to make a deal with them all: if we give them the money, the United States and the taxpayers get a piece of that.”...

That--rest assured--made the U of Wisconsin's trustees pee their pants.

 ...For decades, the Bayh–Dole Act has let universities hoard patents from government-funded research — effectively privatizing profits from taxpayer subsidies. Lutnick just swung a sledgehammer at one of the most sacred cows in the swamp: federally funded university research that magically turns into vast, private university patent portfolios.

They must be terrified. Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and all the rest suddenly face the nightmare scenario of having to share their licensing gravy train with taxpayers. It also blows a hole in their moral shield — the scam, which progressives always fall for, that “we’re just doing noble research.”

No. They’ve been running a massive commercialization scheme subsidized by the public. They now have the option of funding their own research, so they won’t have to share, if they want....

There are plenty of "research" projects at UW which are funded by taxpayers.

This will be fun to watch.