School dreaming of riches from lab discovery loses round in patent battle

BEN DOBBIN
Canadian Press


Saturday, March 29, 2003


ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) - The matchup looks lopsided: America's giant drug companies vs. a midsize college over billions of dollars in royalties from a new class of "super aspirin."

But the University of Rochester isn't backing down, despite losing a round in court earlier this month. It has hired a prestigious law firm and piled up more than $10 million in costs defending the lab work of Dr. Donald Young.

At the heart of the clash between academia and industry is a single question: Should schools get a share of the riches if they make a fundamental discovery and secure a patent but don't set down a clear path to developing a commercial product?

"What's at stake here is whether basic research is patentable," said the school's chief counsel, Gerald Dodson of the law firm Morrison & Foerster in Palo Alto, Calif.

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