The Trump administration is opening a new front in its battle with Harvard University on the issue of patents, marking a new escalation with the elite school that could result in the loss of additional federal funding or intellectual property rights.
In a Friday letter to Harvard President Alan Garber obtained by CNN, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick writes that the Trump administration believes the university is “in breach of the statutory, regulatory, and contractual requirements tied to Harvard’s federal funded research programs and intellectual property arising therefrom, including patents.”
The Commerce Department, Lutnick said, is issuing an “immediate comprehensive review” of Harvard’s federally funded research programs.
The secretary said the administration was also initiating the “march-in” process under a law called the Bayh-Dole Act that lets universities patent research and inventions. That means that if Harvard has failed to disclose or patent its inventions, the federal government could take ownership of the patents or grant third-party licenses.
The letter, first reported by Reuters, marks the latest action by the Trump administration to exert pressure on the school. The Trump administration has frozen billions of dollars in federal funding for research and has targeted the school’s ability to host international students. Harvard and the Trump administration are currently embroiled in a pair of lawsuits.
Still, officials remain optimistic about the prospects of a deal with Harvard to restore funding to the school and drop lawsuits and investigations. The Trump administration has recently struck multimillion-dollar agreements with Columbia and Brown universities.
“While there’s a lawsuit pending with Harvard, and I’m sure that lawsuit will play out, I do hope that Harvard will continue to come to the table with negotiations. Those talks are continuing, and we’d like to have a resolution there, outside of the courts,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a phone interview with CNN last month.
Harvard has sent some signals it is willing to work with the Trump administration, including last month when The Harvard Crimson reported that websites for Harvard College centers serving minority and LGBTQ students and women disappeared. The White House welcomed that development, viewing it as a goodwill gesture that one official described as “good news.” McMahon last month also pointed to the departure of the heads of the university’s Middle Eastern Studies center as a positive step.
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