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In 2007, eleven major U.S. research universities and the Association of American Medical Colleges signed an accord titled In the Public Interest: Nine Points to Consider in Licensing University Technology. It outlined a range of issues that universities should consider when licensing their technology to the private sector—from reservations of rights and limitations on exclusivity to limiting dealings with patent assertion entities to making medical technologies accessible at affordable prices. More than talking points, the document proposed specific contractual clauses intended to promote the educational and public welfare missions of universities. Today, more than a hundred academic institutions and associations around the world have signed the Nine Points document. Yet in the fifteen years since the document was created, there has been no systematic, empirical assessment of its effect on university licensing practices. This Article fills that gap with the first empirical study of the impact of the Nine Points document on university licensing practices. Through a review of 220 publicly available university technology licenses signed both before and after the adoption of the Nine Points document, this Article finds that while the document prompted the expansion of educational and non-profit research using patented university technology, it resulted in few changes relating to the promotion of public health or access to medical technologies. This mixed adoption of the recommendations made by the Nine Points document suggests that there is little consensus regarding the nature of the ‘public interest’ that the Nine Points document sought to promote. This Article recommends that a reorientation of university technology transfer policy may be in order—one that could be facilitated through greater engagement of academic faculty, senior administrators, students, alumni, and other institutional stakeholders in setting policy for university technology transfer.

Abstract: The commitment to license patents that are essential to technical interoperability standards on terms that are fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) is a fundamental mechanism that enables standards to [...]

From Elizabeth Taylor to Mike Tyson, celebrities have claimed ownership of their personae. But while the right of publicity and other laws give individuals the right to control commercial exploitation of their images, voices, mannerisms and taglines, the law stops short of recognizing a property interest in the events of their lives. On the contrary, the First Amendment protects producers of expressive works when telling non-defamatory stories about real people. The intuition that exists among celebrities and lay persons alike that individuals own their "life stories" has been fueled by the decades-old Hollywood practice of "acquiring" life story rights from the subjects of docudrama features based on actual events, sometimes for large sums. In this Article, we explore, critique, and propose to remedy the growing privatization of life stories and show that while the life story deal may seem to reflect beneficial private ordering, it in fact creates a significant negative externality by converting an essential part of the public domain into private property, thereby upsetting the balance of shared and proprietary information on which our systems of free speech and creative expression depend. We offer a parsimonious solution to this problem: Congress should enact a new federal statute barring the enforcement of state rights of publicity against fact-based creative productions such as books, films, and television programs, provided that, for private individuals, their name, image, and likeness are altered to protect their identities. Having a single, clear rule that operates ex ante provides uniformity and clarity that will secure the status of life story facts as part of the public domain without limiting the legal protection of individuals' dignitary, reputational, and privacy interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]