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Despite well-publicized, lucrative licensing deals, most university technology experts find that patenting and licensing inventions is a process laden with potential pitfalls. While universities claim that the investment is generally worthwhile for a number of reasons, the challenge, many specialists say, is choosing the right project and matching it with the right industry at the right time. Patents often languish, investments frequently sour. The fact is, for every income-earning patent, mil

On The Decline Author: Neeraja Sankaran The time-honored tradition of visiting professorships -- invitations extended to faculty taking sabbaticals from their own institutions to teach and do research here -- will once again be in evidence as schools reopen in the fall. As throngs of students return to their classrooms and laboratories, they may find that certain familiar faces are missing or replaced by new ones, or that there are new names and courses listed in the fall directories. The pra

Cal Takes The Field For ALSPrized Pizza The Digital MerckThe Whole Kit And Kaboodle Immortal GenesIndia Joins MacArthur Leaders Extraordinary ExpeditionsTourette Training Grants On September 6, Baltimore Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken, Jr. broke the consecutive-games-played record of 2,130 set by Lou Gehrig, the New York Yankees first-baseman who died in 1941 of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) -- now known as Lou Gehrig's disease. To honor Gehrig, 260 one-time, $5,000 seats were sold along

In the book Shoeless Joe, better known as the movie Field of Dreams, the main character converts an Iowa cornfield into a baseball field after a voice says, "If you build it, he will come." In Great Falls, Mont., supporters of the McLaughlin Research Institute (MRI) began construction of a 42,000 square-foot, state-of-the-art, genetics research facility on prairie farmland in 1991 with the hope that if they built it, scientists would come. The new building, constructed with federal and state f

STRONG WORDS: OSTP's Skip Johns blasts Congress for its "shortsighted act". Only a presidential veto--or a last-minute change of heart--could have stopped the Republican-led Congress from abolishing its only in-house source of science-policy analysis, the 23-year-old Office of Technology Assessment. But a threatened veto is now unlikely to come, and Congress has voted and moved on to other matters. OTA is history. On July 27, House and Senate conferees sealed the agency's fate in H.R. 104-21

A federal law written with corrupt Department of Defense contractors in mind has become a serious concern for university administrators, while at the same time giving scientific-fraud whistleblowers new hope for success in pressing their charges. BREAKING NEW GROUND: Scientist-lawyer Eugene Dong first saw the scientific fraud aspects of the False Claims Act. The False Claims Act, also known as the Lincoln Law, was passed in 1863 and amended more than a century later, in 1986. Originally, the

As the school year commences, returning scientists are again applying for grants, awards, and other financial support to pursue their various disciplines. But six academic scientists among the 24 recipients of this year's John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowships--popularly known as the "genius awards"--are in an extremely fortunate position: Their explorations for the next five years will extend as far as their imaginations will take them. "When the director called me up to co

Prime Time Physicists Rare Disease Research Lobby Lab Vandal Is Sentenced O.J. And DNA Powerfully Funny Math ACS Kicks In For College Aging Research Fellowships IMAGE-MAKER: Leon Lederman has TV dreams. Concerned about improving the popular image of scientists as personality-free nerds, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Lederman is developing a television pilot that would instead show researchers as "skeptical, creative romantics," according to the New York Times Magazine ("Sunday," Aug.

Sidebar: Patent Primer MERCK SUES FOR LONGER PATENT TERM UNDER INTERIM GATT RULES Under a new definition of patent lifetimes in effect since June, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) hopes inventors who process their patent applications expeditiously can obtain an additional year or two of patent protection. But for scientists in the biotechnology industry, the question remains whether their inventions can be pushed through the system any faster. And even if PTO shortens the t

The goal of patent laws is to promote inventiveness and public disclosure of useful knowledge. In return, inventors are granted exclusive use of their inventions for a specified period. To obtain a typical patent, U.S. law requires proof that an invention is: a new and useful process, machine, manufactured item, or chemical substance; novel (never before described or existing in nature in the described form); and nonobvious. Patents are not allowed on ideas per se, only the application of a

Under interim rules included in the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (P.L. 103-465), a number of pharmaceutical companies believed they stood to gain an extended patent term for some very profitable drugs. Initially, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) agreed with the drug-makers, then reversed its position and turned down about 80 of the hoped-for patent-term extensions. Now, Whitehouse Station, N.J.-based Merck and Co. Inc. is suing PTO and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (

Directory assistance for the 919 area code in North Carolina no longer lists a phone number for Macronex Inc., a small biotechnology company located in Morrisville. Although technically still a going concern, Macronex currently has only two employees and is in the process of going out of business. STRAPPED: ImmunoGen CEO Mitchel Sayare observes, from hard experience, that "things are not going well for companies that don't have enough cash." "We've pretty much closed our operation . . . a cas