Senator Maralyn Chase from Washington State has proposed the bill, Regarding the assignment of intellectual property rights at institutions of higher education, following a decision by the US Supreme Court - Stanford v. Roche - on an interpretation of whether federal money conferred the IP to the university or inventor.

US-based Pennsylvania State University, University of Minnesota and University of Minnesota have changed its intellectual property (IP) rules to potentially allow corporations that sponsor research at the academic institutions to keep the rights.

The Leonard and Madlyn Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute at the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania has sued Craig Thompson and healthcare companies Agios Pharmaceuticals and Celgene, in Federal Court, according to news provider Courthouse News.

SBIR spends $2.3bn per year in grants of up to $1m per start-up while STTR provides $275m.

The report, Competitiveness and Innovative Capacity of the United States, said the pace of university patenting, licensing of technology to industry, and the proliferation of university?linked startup companies slowed starting in 2000, a slowdown that persisted after the brief recession of the early 2000s.