The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:
(a) The state is home to many of the world’s top research universities, national laboratories, and leading-edge high-technology companies that generate significant intellectual property.
(b) It is in the interest of the state to ensure that the results of state-funded research are promptly developed and protected and to make the research available in the public domain, where appropriate.
(c) The commercialization of technology developed with the investment of taxpayer dollars in the form of contracts, grants, and agreements could generate public benefit, including, but not limited to, state revenues, favorable pricing, revenue sharing, reinvestment into research, development of new technologies, the commercialization of the product of state-funded research, and the jobs created from these types of research.
(d) It is in the interest of the state to facilitate, promote, and enhance technology transfer programs that will facilitate the transfer of technology into the marketplace for the public benefit.
(e) The Legislature supports the use of efficient models to develop and streamline infrastructures, policies, and processes for the management of intellectual property developed under state funding in order to stimulate economic development in the state while, at the same time, minimizing costs of administering policies in this area.
(f) It is the intent of the Legislature that the rights of state agencies and departments to track and manage intellectual property created with any state funds shall be interpreted so as to promote the benefit to the public.
(g) It is the intent of the Legislature that the Department of General Services have access to information about intellectual property created by state employees and by state-funded research, consistent with state and federal laws and regulations governing access to this information.
(h) The Legislature recognizes that the licensing of or limitations on the use of intellectual property should accommodate free expression and, therefore, state agencies and departments should not develop policies or procedures to license or otherwise limit the use of the state’s intellectual property in expressive works created by nonstate employees or without state funding.
(Added by Stats. 2012, Ch. 463, Sec. 1. (AB 744) Effective January 1, 2013.)