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by pbk1 1590 days ago
While we're talking about funding basic research - how come these independent institutes and government funding agencies don't get equity (warrants, options, whatever) in the entities that ultimately commercialize and patent this research?

I reckon they probably take some cut as a licensing fee, but seems like participating in the upside would create significant incentives over the current regimes.

2 comments

> how come these independent institutes and government funding agencies don't get equity (warrants, options, whatever) in the entities that ultimately commercialize and patent this research?

Because if it was trivially easy to provide such "equity", the research would've been funded by non-government, private sources already. The whole point of public research funding is to deal with fields and scenarios where this is not really feasible.

See the Bayh-Dole Act.