Earlier this year, William Smith writes at the Pioneer Institute, “[t]he federal government announced the formation of a working group to ‘develop a framework for the implementation of the march-in provision of the Bayh-Dole Act.'” Smith thinks it’s a bad idea — the title of his piece is “University Science Research Is Under Threat.”

The very simplified version:

Under the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act, universities can use taxpayer money to do research, then patent any useful results and make bank on their discoveries by licensing those patents to commercial entities.

The “march-in” provision says that if a university doesn’t license its patent quickly enough, the federal government can “march in,” take control of the patent, and license it.

The Biden administration’s interest in using the “march-in” provision is to lower drug prices by grabbing patents and licensing them to companies that promise to sell the resulting products cheaply.

I have a better idea, and it’s not based entirely on my objections to the whole concept of “intellectual property,” which I’ve written about elsewhere:

Government-funded research should be treated as “work for hire,” and its results should always, in every case, go instantly into the public domain.

The idea isn’t far-out or fringe. It’s how government-employee-generated writing and text are already handled where copyright is concerned.

The main argument against it is that companies are less likely to make products that they don’t get a 20-year monopoly on through patent protection.

My response to that argument is a two-parter.

Part one: Almost any company will make almost any product that it expects to make profitably, even if other companies can also make that product. Name the fast-food joint that won’t offer burgers because they can’t be patented, or the shoe company that won’t copy every un-patented aspect of the latest sandal craze for a little market share.

Part two: If these patents are  licensed, the rightful recipients of the licensing fees are the taxpayers who unwillingly “invested” in the research, not the researchers who already get paid by the taxpayers to do it and the universities that already got funded by the taxpayers to facilitate it.

Thirty companies sending out, and every taxpayer opening, 30 envelopes a week, each containing a check for one cent, seems rather burdensome and complex. The best way to “repay” the taxpayers’ “investments” (other than not forcing them to make those “investments” in the first place) is to put the research in the public domain and let those taxpayers benefit from the lower prices and wider variety of choices that monopolies rob them of.

It’s time to get past the idea that monopolies and government research winner-picking are the wellsprings of innovation. They aren’t and never have been.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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As of September 17, Axios reports, US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has “directed the Senate’s Sergeant at Arms to no longer enforce the chamber’s informal dress code for its members.”

A dress code that’s enforced by the Sergeant at Arms doesn’t sound very “informal” to me. The long-time standard, per the New York Times, has been “suit and tie for men and dresses with covered shoulders or pantsuits for women.”

The women’s dress code is, of course, more modern than the men’s, for the simple reason that no women served in the Senate until 1922 (when Georgia’s governor appointed Rebecca Latimer Felton) to serve for one day — it was another decade before Arkansan Hattie Caraway became the first woman elected to the body).

As for the men, I don’t really understand why “professional attire” for Senators in the 21st century would necessarily indicate an outfit designed for British gentlemen of leisure during the Victorian era.

If we’re going to have Senate and House dress codes, let them be specific, mandatory, formal, and enforced. My suggestion:

The Senate will maintain a wardrobe department, staffed by professional designers and fitters. Each morning before the session opens, Senators will draw wooden balls from a bag, each marked with one of two letters: “C” or “S.”

Those who draw the letter “C” will be required to dress as circus clowns — garish makeup, giant shoes, multi-colored wigs, the whole nine yards.

Those who draw the letter “S” will be required to dress as super-villains, selecting from a wide variety of costumes based on the longstanding American comic book tradition.

There will of course, be some overlap — one may safely to show up as the Joker regardless of which ball one draws. I can already tell you that Ted Cruz (R-TX) will positively rock as the Penguin, and Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) is already a ringer for Harley Quinn (also a clown-supervillain twofer!).

As for the House, a similar setup, but the balls will be labeled “B” and “H” for “Bear on a Bicycle” and “Henchman.” Just to keep the circus/comic book theme, you know.

My suggested dress code would serve the purposes of not just modernizing things and adding a little pizzazz to what’s already a professional wrestling atmosphere, but of forcing American politicians to dress in a manner comporting with their actual behaviors and job descriptions.

It would probably also drive C-SPAN’s ratings way up.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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In case you haven’t heard (oh, yes, you’ve heard), former US president Donald Trump faces  criminal charges in various jurisdictions, relating to everything from his business practices to his handling of classified documents to his conduct regarding the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

Comes now special counsel Jack Smith, in one of those prosecutions,  asking judge Tanya Chutkan to issue a “gag order” under which Trump would be forbidden to publicly make “certain prejudicial extrajudicial statements.”

I tend toward a dim view of “gag orders” in general, but this proposal is particularly silly and counter-productive. It embodies the same level of evil as any other demand that someone’s public speech be curtailed, but it’s also likely to be ineffectual, or even actually damage Smith’s efforts to convict Trump. To steal a quote incorrectly attributed to French diplomat Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord concerning an 1804 trial and execution, “it’s worse than a crime, it’s a blunder.”

Smith doesn’t tell us anything we don’t know in attempting to justify the request.

Trump, prosecutors claim, “knows that when he publicly attacks individuals and institutions, he inspires others to perpetrate threats and harassment against his targets.” His “extrajudicial statements are intended to undermine public confidence in an institution — the judicial system — and to undermine confidence in and intimidate individual — the Court, the jury pool, witnesses, and prosecutors.”

Anyone who’s followed Trump’s career in general or his recent legal troubles in particular knows all that to be true.

“Gagging” him, even if he complied with the order (don’t bet the ranch on that happening,  if you want to keep the ranch) wouldn’t end, or even reduce, the threats or attempts to intimidate.

Trump has plenty of proxies, most of whom he  wouldn’t have to personally ask (and probably doesn’t even personally know), to keep that kind of thing up on his behalf.

Why give him plausible deniability? And why try to prevent him from “tainting the jury pool,” when any such “tainting” will likely be to the prosecution’s benefit rather than his?

Trump never shuts up. Many people believe, with good reason, that he CAN’T shut up. Every time he’s accused of something, he proudly owns it, pronounces it not just non-criminal but “perfect,”  whines that he’s just the little guy facing persecution, and issues open threats against anyone and everyone involved.

How are those chosen as jurors likely to take those threats? As evidence that he should be sent on his merry way to keep doing the same things he’s been doing, or as evidence that perhaps a stiff set of iron bars between him and them is called for?

Because these cases are all inherently political, he’s almost certain to hang any jury anyway —  at least one out of every 12 Americans uncritically buys whatever “AS SEEN ON TV!” goop he’s selling.

But sweeping those threats under the rug will give some otherwise reasonable people time to forget about them. And it’s always better to err on the side of free speech anyway.

Let him talk.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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