Some academics feel that the Bayh-Dole Act cheats the public out of the proceeds from inventions funded with taxpayer money and distorts the way universities work. “Encouraged by a small number of patents that made huge sums, universities developed massive infrastructure to profit from their researchers,” argues Michael Eisen, Doudna’s colleague at Berkeley. He believes that the government should put all work funded by federal dollars into the public domain. “We all would benefit returning academic science to its roots in basic discovery oriented research. We see with CRISPR the toxic effects
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