PUBLIC LECTURE: Social responsibility in/of technology transfer

A public lecture by Ashley Stevens, President, Focus IP Group, LLC Lecturer, School of Management, Boston University.

Over a decade ago, the President and Trustees of Yale University woke up one Monday morning to find themselves portrayed in a very unfavorable light in the lead story of the Business Section of the New York Times. A license they had granted Bristol-Myers Squibb to develop d4T to treat AIDS, which BMS had successfully developed into Zerit, was now being used to prevent Médécins sans Frontiéres from purchasing generic d4T to treat the poor in sub-Saharan Africa. BMS quickly backed down and agreed not to assert their South African patent, and the socially responsible licensing movement was born out of this incident.

However, despite the fact that the policies and procedures Yale followed were and still are the norms in academic licensing, few academic institutions have included protections to prevent such incidents in the future. Why not? Should they?

Free, but RSVP essential via http://www.ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures/stevens