In 1980, Birch Bayh, a veteran Indiana senator, was defeated after serving 18 years in a job he loved. But in the final hour of a lame-duck session held after the election he lost, he managed to squeak a last bill through Congress. Twenty five years later, Bayh is being hailed as a visionary whose hard- won legislation helped create the biotechnology industry by spawning a whole generation of scientist-entrepreneurs. The Bayh-Dole act allowed universities and their faculty members to stake patent claims on discoveries they made through research funded by such federal agencies as the National Institutes of Health, instead of leaving ownership of the intellectual property with the government.
