Government Contracts at the High Court
March 24, 2011
On February 28, 2011, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Stanford Junior Univ. v. Roche Molecular Sys., Inc., on the issue of whether a federal contractor's rights to an invention under the Bayh-Dole Act, 35 U.S.C. §§ 200-12, are trumped by a contractor-employee inventor's prior assignment to a third party of title to the same invention. As discussed in the March 14, 2011, BNA's Federal Contracts Report article "High Noon for Bayh-Dole?" by C&M's John McCarthy and Jon Baker, if upheld, contractors performing federally funded R&D work will need to be diligent to ensure that the assignments they receive from their employee-inventors do not take a back seat to any assignment agreements between their employee-inventors and third parties.
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