The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980

The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 specifically focused on the rules concerning the disposition of IP rights over inventions that result
from federally funded research. It effectively limited the government’s role in ownership, vesting ownership rights to the
organization where the invention is made, along with responsibilities and conditions for how the intellectual property is to be
managed.

Taking inspiration from the experience of the United States under the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which harmonized the variety of
U.S. government agency IP ownership policies and ownership of intellectual property that results from work done at publicly
funded organizations, legislative reforms have been introduced in many countries.