24 February 2022 - The Patent and Trademark Law Amendments Act (Bayh-Dole Act [35 USC §200-212]) was enacted in 1980 and established a statutory framework for patent rights emerging from federally funded research. 

The original act stipulated that small businesses and nonprofit organisations, including universities, could patent inventions that were “conceived or first actually reduced to practice in the performance of work under a [federal] funding agreement.”

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