Without knowing all the other possible details here, it just doesn’t sound right at first blush. But I would suggest you run this past your university counsel. 

 

Tell them to take a close look at the specific contract clauses, and to compare those to the Bayh-Dole Act.  It wouldn’t be the first time a federal agency tried to ignore federal regulations or statutes (usually out of ignorance or very old boilerplate).   

 

The Bayh-Dole Act allows for the transfer of exclusive control over many government funded inventions to universities and businesses operating with federal contracts for the purpose of further development and commercialization. The contracting universities and businesses are then permitted to exclusively license the inventions to other parties. The federal government, however, retains "March-in" rights to license the invention to a third party, without the consent of the patent holder or original licensee, where it determines the invention is not being made available to the public on a reasonable basis, (in other words, to issue a compulsory license.)

 

 

"If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?"    

- Albert Einstein

 

 

 

 

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