Financed design research made by Universities: some considerations about the protection of results

The gradual decrease of the public funding of research, is counterbalanced by an increasing interest by part of the politic power to foster collaboration between universities and industry for development of competitive innovation. In the United States the Bayh–Dole Act of 1980 allowed university patenting, by granting ownership and copyrights of inventions to universities and changing the way public organizations conceive the applied research. The patent has become an increasingly significant indicator of scientific productivity, and seems to be able to grant the kind of protection required by the Industry to cooperate with the University in funding research aimed to innovation. Through an analysis of literature concerning this scenario, the author provides some reflections about the protection of the result of a specific kind of applied research: the Design Research.