Overview

• Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick initiated a Bayh-Dole Act probe on August 8 to evaluate Harvard’s compliance with federal disclosure and U.S. manufacturing rules for taxpayer-funded inventions.
• The department’s letter gives Harvard until September 5 to submit details on all patents tied to federal research grants, including current use and licensing terms.
• Failure to meet Bayh-Dole requirements would let the government seize patent titles or grant third-party licenses under march-in rights, a step not taken since the law’s 1980 enactment.
• Harvard’s portfolio includes more than 5,800 federally funded patents and over 900 licenses with 650 industry partners, representing technologies potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
• The patent review marks a fresh escalation in the months-long legal clash that began with the administration’s April freeze of over $2 billion in Harvard research funding and civil rights allegations.