Remarks by Director John A. Squires on the Economic Impact of Bayh-Dole: American Ingenuity and Economic Handshakes

Remarks as delivered

John A. Squires

Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and 60th Director of the USPTO

Bayh-Dole Coalition's release of its new report, "Measuring the Impact of American Innovation"

The Economic Impact of Bayh-Dole: American Ingenuity and Economic Handshakes
(Or, Good Things Happen When You Move Breakthroughs Closer the Market…)

Washington, D.C.

September 22, 2026

Good morning. Brian, thank you for that introduction, and thank you to the Bayh-Dole Coalition for bringing us together on Capitol Hill, where the original choice was made.

And Joe Allen, thank you, thank you, thank you. For decades, you have kept attention on the very notion that sits at the center of American innovation policy: discovery is an achievement. And commercialization is the cause célèbres that follows.

We are here this morning to take stock in an engine of American return.

The economic impact of the Bayh-Dole Act report gives us a thirty-year account-a virtual play by play as it were-of the story of America blazing a trail from federally initiated research and discovery, to the marketplace of ideas, to the real economy, bettering lives.

Its central finding deserves to be stated directly: Bayh-Dole as a construct has generated substantial returns for the American economy.

Brian gave you the numbers, but they are so worth repeating. Like any good meeting, going to tell you what we're going to tell you, tell you, and tell you what we told you.

So again, between 1996 and 2025, technology transfer associated with funded university and nonprofit research that benefited from generated up to $3.3 trillion in gross economic output, contributed as much as $1.7 trillion to U.S. GDP, and supported as many as 7.6 million job-years.

Now, over that same period, patented inventions benefiting from federal funding entered the marketplace at unprecedented levels. Since Bayh-Dole was enacted, the annual number of patents issued on those inventions has increased more than seventy-fold. Now, we're talkin'. Warms my heart.

Between 2000 and 2024, research supported by the Department of War, Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health, NASA, and National Science Foundation generated more than 155,000 patents. Bully.

But what really matters, from 2001 through 2025, academic technology transfer helped launch 19,027 startups and introduce 17,252 new products. Brilliant.

These protected inventions are on-the-move companies forming. Products reaching people. Public investment generating impressive returns that might not otherwise have seen the light of day.

Now, as for the USPTO, the patent figures I detailed speak to me. They mark the point at which a breakthrough takes on a form that the private sector can evaluate, license, finance, improve, manufacture, and deploy.

Every piece of innovation we put into circulation is a potential job, a new business, a competitive advantage, an investible asset, a life-saving drug.

Just shy of forty-six years ago, Congress-led in this body by Senators Birch Bayh and Bob Dole-confronted the very question we still ask today: what happens, or rather what should happen, after the breakthrough?

Before Bayh-Dole, the answer was muddled and unclear, and the results: wholly unsatisfactory. The federal government held roughly 28,000 patents arising from publicly funded research, yet-get ready for this-fewer than five percent had been licensed for commercialization. Five percent. That's 1400 patents. Edison himself came close to that.

To be fair, the government had done, and indeed delivered on, what it was uniquely positioned to do: support research and push scientific frontiers whose payoff can be inherently uncertain. The old system then was asking government to do something it really was never equipped to do-act as a commercialization agent, and not only that, a commercialization agent without the available market incentives, commercial networks, or risk capital that that work requires.

Enter Bayh-Dole. Their answer was bold then, and looks brilliant now. They handed the keys to the private sector and let the private sector do its thing. That required real confidence in American enterprise-a healthy respect for the power of American ingenuity: Move the breakthrough closer to the market, where it has a better chance for uptake.

Then, let entrepreneurs, private capital, competition, and commercial savvy provide the throughline and ultimate injection into the real economy.

Now, the genius in this new law was actually in the handoff. Federal investment of course could spur the breakthrough. Universities and nonprofits could then steward the invention. But really, only the private sector could see to development, improvement, financing, manufacturing, market selection, and scaling.

For our part, America's Innovation Agency supplies the infrastructure that helps that handoff handshake with the real economy. When warranted, we issue born strong patents and put them into circulation-an asset that private capital can diligence, license, finance, and build out. Go forth and order the market with your exclusive right. You might even see something about that in our Constitution. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8, I'm talking to you.

The report released today measures what this new answer then has produced now over time. I'm here to tell you: we get it. With your report today, and our USPTO macroeconomic report released in July, it's like we're brothers from another mother.

Our report found that IP-intensive industries contributed nearly $11.4 trillion to private-sector GDP in 2024, or 44 percent of the total. They directly employed 49.6 million Americans, supported another 16.2 million jobs, and accounted for more than 81 percent of U.S. commodity exports.

Placed side by side, the two reports trace one continuous story. Your report follows a stream of inventions as they move from scientific research into the market. Our report shows the scale of the IP-intensive economy into which those inventions flow.

Together, they show the extraordinary returns America can earn when ingenuity is recognized, protected, transferred, financed, and put to work. American ingenuity is a force like no other and Bayh-Dole was just the juice directed to just the right segment at just the right time, to make it sing.

That is why I see the Bayh-Dole Coalition and the USPTO having the ability to make beautiful music together, ushering in the Golden Age of Innovation, together, as profound-and complementary-economic partners. We work along the same transmission line, at different points and nodes mind you, but committedly toward the same result.

The new report also gives us something especially useful for the work that meaningfully lies ahead.

Stepping back, America's innovation economy-and infrastructure-of which we are both part is national in nature and design. But the subtle beauty and happy open secret here is that commercialization and economic take-up happen through local relationships. Like politics, as is well worn in these halls, innovation uptake is ultimately local-and I know that somewhere up there, Tip O'Neil probably smiles.

Consider the lab-coated researcher who recognizes that a discovery may hold commercial value, but how to get it there?

A technology-transfer professional sees it, understands it, and knows how to protect it, but how to get it there?

But the entrepreneur stands close by; a local investor stands ready to commit hard dollar capital; and a new start-up stands-up to scale it.

They know how to get it there. This. This is how American ingenuity manifests.

Today's report shines a light on the importance of the local dimension in the innovation equation for success. Approximately 70 percent of academic licensing agreements are with small companies. Indeed, many are university spinouts that remain in the regions where they were locally founded. The benefits take hold and take root close to the research: new products, new firms, and new jobs that strengthen local economies.

To that I say, this is where our work at America's Innovation Agency stands ready.

Indeed, last night, I proudly welcomed the University of South Florida as the USPTO's newest node in our ground-breaking community engagement footprint, and the timing could not be better.

The timing could not be better because your report gives us a clearer picture, a direct line of sight as to where innovation from research and discovery is moving, where it's most effective. And our growing network of what? Of local nodes give us a ready and boots-on-the ground way to be embedded where that innovation happens, whenever it happens. And happen it will. Innovation knows no other way.

My job is to lean in and leanly place America's Innovation Agency at the top of the innovation funnel, early enough to boost researchers to recognize protectability, goose startups to understand the early value of patent protection, match-make technology-transfer professionals with USPTO expertise, and zero-in on the unique innovation signals emanating from each local ecosystem.

USF joins us in a growing network reaching from New Hampshire to Research Triangle Park to Georgia, Alabama, Utah, and Montana. Each node begins with the strengths and needs of its region. Tampa will be Tampa. Bozeman will be Bozeman. Huntsville will be Huntsville. And our new HBCU partners will bring their amazing network of reach, integration, and scale throughout.

Each has its personality and flavor-and that is a feature and a strength of our model and growing footprint-just as local stewardship and the granular recognition of it-is a strength of today's report on Bayh-Dole.

What's more, both our respective spheres are further complemented by the programs like the National Science Foundation's Regional Innovation Engines, among other federal efforts, focused on building research capacity, talent, and competitive clusters.

But for us all, the common denominator is that the private sector is the key, supplying judgment, risk capital, development, and scale. Such is the irresistible force and full glory of American ingenuity.

I submit to you, whatever part of the marvelous innovation elephant we respectively have, we shared a common question: how do we help more American breakthroughs make the full journey? Get shovels into the ground? Get products into the marketplace? Raise the tide that lifts all boats?

Breakthroughs are moments. A researcher's finest hour. Their crossing the finish line. Their ultimate, personal "eureka, I found it" moment.

But of course, at the same time, it's just the very beginning. It's the very beginning because our private sector stands ready to unleash commercialization to become its own cause-an undertaking correlated to the nuances, needs, and demands of the marketplace.

Every breakthrough needs a transmission mechanism ready to deliver it: one that can protect it, finance it, develop it, and carry it home into the real economy.

Forty-six years ago, Bayh-Dole supplied what was thought to be an unbridgeable airgap in R&D. It supplied an invisible hand-in the form of a handoff mechanism-to the private sector. Today's report remarkably and demonstrably shows what this simple but profound shift has returned to our nation. Now, armed with this economic uptake information and data, we can smartly use our complementary skill sets to turbocharge what comes next-from laboratory to market, from community to company, and from American discovery to American prosperity. American ingenuity-there you go again. We're standing ready.

Thank you.