patrick.net

Colorful Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick dropped another bombshell, this one on the academic-industrial complex. “Patents!” he exclaimed. “We have given tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions, to universities for them to do research and invent things. You know who owns the patents? The universities. So we are going to make a deal with them all: if we give them the money, the United States and the taxpayers get a piece of that.”




https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1960409676710830299

“It is so much fun to work here,” Lutnick enthused. “We just have a blast! Linda’s hitting Harvard; now we send them a patent letter, and hit ‘em again. I’m having the time of my life working for you.” He sounded like an enthusiastic Harrison Ford gushing at the start of a Raiders of the Lost Ark expedition.

Lutnick’s promise was news dynamite. For decades, the Bayh–Dole Act has let universities hoard patents from government-funded research — effectively privatizing profits from taxpayer subsidies. Lutnick just swung a sledgehammer at one of the most sacred cows in the swamp: federally funded university research that magically turns into vast, private university patent portfolios.

They must be terrified. Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and all the rest suddenly face the nightmare scenario of having to share their licensing gravy train with taxpayers. It also blows a hole in their moral shield — the scam, which progressives always fall for, that “we’re just doing noble research.”

No. They’ve been running a massive commercialization scheme subsidized by the public. They now have the option of funding their own research, so they won’t have to share, if they want. ...

And let’s not forget that in early February, President Trump created a sovereign wealth fund. Yesterday, in related news, Lutnick announced it would be restyled as a “national and economic security fund.” We don’t know what the plan is yet, but the pieces are being assembled on the board. In even more intriguing comments, Lutnick also declared that defense giant Lockheed Martin was "basically an arm of the U.S. government," pointing out that it makes nearly all of its revenue from lucrative government weapons contracts.