Supreme Court Rules on Scope of Federal Contractors' Rights in Federally Funded Inventions
Client Alert | 1 min read | 06.07.11
On June 6, 2011, the United States Supreme Court, by a 7-2 margin, held in Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University v. Roche Molecular Systems, Inc., No. 09-1159, that the term "subject invention" in the Bayh-Dole Act (35 U.S.C. § 200, et seq.), the statute that allocates certain rights in federally funded "subject invention[s]," includes only inventions for which the contractor has obtained a valid assignment from the employee inventor(s), and, therefore, that a contractor (and presumably the government) cannot obtain rights to an invention under the Bayh-Dole Act absent such an assignment. In so holding, the Court stated that the Bayh-Dole Act "simply assures contractors that they may keep title to whatever it is they already have" – which serves as a reminder to federal contractors desiring title to their employees' inventions to obtain valid assignments.
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U.S. Department of Commerce Partially Relaxes Export Controls on Syria
On August 28, the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) published a final rule that modifies the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) to reduce the number of export control restrictions on Syria, in alignment with Executive Order 14312, Providing For The Revocation of Syria Sanctions. The key adjustments made by this rule include the addition of new or expanded license exception eligibility for exports and reexports to Syria (which significantly broadens the number of items that can be exported or reexported to Syria) and the adoption of more permissive license review policies for exports and reexports to Syria.
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