How Ownership Slows Down the Climate Fight in Our Public Universities

By: Zoe Babyar, Associate Editor 2026-2027        |        October 08, 2026

The Federal Research Baseline

Under the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, nonprofit universities may choose to retain title to certain inventions arising from federally funded research, subject to some restrictions. [1] Essentially, Bayh-Dole allows universities to keep ownership of the inventions their researchers develop using federal grants, rather than automatically vesting title in the federal government, while reserving certain rights for the government. The purpose of this act was to promote public availability and commercialization of federally supported inventions.

However, ownership under Bayh-Dole is not automatically assigned. In Stanford v. Roche (2011), the Supreme Court held that Bayh-Dole does not automatically vest title in a university, and a university’s ability to retain title depends in part on whether it has obtained the inventor’s rights through an effective assignment arrangement. [2] Bayh-Dole therefore establishes a federal baseline, but it does not create a uniform system. Individual states have now taken a variety of different statutory approaches to determine invention ownership.

How States Assign Invention Ownership

For example, Ohio law provides that discoveries, inventions, and patents arising from specified research at state colleges or universities will automatically become the sole property of that institution. [3] Meanwhile, Connecticut law gives universities ownership rights only in certain employee-related inventions, with the scope of ownership varying by statutorily specified invention categories. [4] Multiply these variations across fifty states, and the patchwork of differing rules can create complex allocation of questions, particularly as research crosses state lines. 

In 2022, the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics found 20.2% of U.S. science and engineering research articles were produced by a single institution while 39.1% involved international collaboration. [5] From these figures, approximately 41% of domestic research articles involved authors affiliated with multiple U.S. institutions. Therefore, research crossing state lines is common and typical, despite Bayh-Dole’s failure to address such arrangements.

How Universities Calculate Commercialization

If universities cannot litigate invention infringement when they expect to, they lose key opportunities to earn from their investment. In University of South Florida Board of Trustees v. United States (2024), a federally funded research collaboration between the University of South Florida and the Mayo Clinic led to litigation over whether the invention qualified for a government license under Bayh-Dole. [6] The Federal Circuit held that it did, and USF could not collect infringement damages from a government-authorized use of the patented technology. 

Universities hoping to generate revenue from their research know that not every invention can justify the cost of commercialization. [7] Technology-transfer offices therefore evaluate disclosures based not only on patentability, but also on commercial potential, development requirements, and the likelihood of finding a licensing partner. [8]; [9] For climate technologies that require substantial additional research or face uncertain markets, those hurdles can make commercialization, and the university resources needed to pursue it, harder to secure. If inventors span multiple states, universities may face greater uncertainty about whether they have secured the rights necessary to commercialize an invention or whether pursuing those rights could expose them to litigation. Each hurdle to commercialization represents a pause the planet cannot afford.  

Confusion Slows the Fight Against Climate Change

Time is essential to fighting the climate crisis. These life-saving technologies cannot wait for legal professionals to debate invention ownership before entering the market. They need to deploy while there is still time to make a real difference. [10] It may be time to re-examine Bayh-Dole and how we interpret it to create a legal framework that satisfies university financial interests and empowers climate research to move with the speed this crisis demands.