Compliance Score

A proposal submitted to the NIST PEER competition by Nicholas LeBlanc

Summary of Problem

Institutions often rely on their number of Notifications in iEdison to gauge how well they are

managing Bayh-Dole compliance. But without a comparison to their number of EIRs, this

number may be misleading. In addition, institutions of different sizes or different levels of federal

funding have no direct way of comparing themselves against their peers. There is no common

metric that institutions can use to size up their own compliance and their compliance level

relative to peers.

Proposed Solution

This proposal centers on a compliance score that would allow peer comparisons and also an

absolute rating of how well an institution is managing Bayh-Dole compliance. The score is

calculated as a ratio / percentage:

# of Compliance Obligations Met (COM) / # of Compliance Obligations Required (COR)

A score will allow institutions to measure their relative compliance and incentivize them to

improve. Institutions who reach a certain threshold (e.g., 90%) can be congratulated through

regular email communications to iEdison users. Institutions would likely take pride in achieving

and maintaining high compliance scores, in addition to fostering healthy competition. However,

it is important to note that this score should not be used punitively, as that would further

discourage compliance administrators already struggling.

The methods outlined below could be implemented by a series of SQL queries based on

iEdison data. The results could be displayed either when the user logs into iEdison, or when the

user visits their account pages.

In the sections that follow, I intend to accomplish several goals:

● Define terms and suggest methods to calculate values based on data already available

in iEdison

● Suggest a high-level algorithm for calculating a score

● Address important caveats

Definitions

Compliance Obligations. These include the obligations stipulated by the Bayh-Dole regulations

and include the following:

1. Report the Invention within 60 days of disclosure

2. Submit an accepted disclosure document with the EIR.

3. Either elect title or waive within 2 years of creating the EIR.

4. If title is elected, submit an accepted initial patent application within 1 year of electing

title.

5. If title is elected, submit a utilization report for each year since election.

6. If a bar date is indicated, elect title or waive at least 60 days prior to the bar date:
Number of Compliance Obligations Met (COM): One point is assigned when each of the

following conditions is true:

1. The invention was reported within 60 days of disclosure (i.e., the EIR’s creation date is

<= 60 days after the reported disclosure date).

2. In cases where the disclosure is either accepted or rejected, one point for an acceptance

(that is, ignore cases where the disclosure is neither accepted nor rejected, since the

funding agency has not yet made a determination).

3. The date the EIR is set to either “Elect Title” or waived falls within 2 years of EIR

creation.

4. The date of election or waiver (as reported) falls within 2 years of EIR creation.

a. This allows institutions some ability to correct previous non-compliance.

5. If the EIR status is “Elect Title”, then a Patent report with filing date within 1 year of

election must exist.

6. If the EIR status is “Elect Title”, then a Patent report with filing date within 1 year of

election must exist AND be accepted IF the agency has entered an acceptance/rejection

status.

a. Consider only cases where the patent report has been evaluated (accepted or

rejected), while ignoring cases where a determination has not yet been made.

7. If a bar date is indicated and the invention was waived, the waiver occurred >= 60 days

before the bar date.

8. If title is elected, one point for each year since election that a utilization report was

submitted.

Number of Compliance Obligations Required (COR): Points are assigned according to the

following conditions:

1. One point for each invention reported.

2. One point for each disclosure that is either rejected or accepted.

a. Ignore disclosures without an acceptance or rejection, since the agency has not

yet made a determination.

3. Two points for each EIR created more than 2 years before today (to correspond to

conditions 3 and 4 of COM).

4. Two points for each EIR with status “Elect Title” (to correspond to conditions 5 and 6 of

COM).

5. One point for every disclosure where a bar date is indicated (to correspond to condition 7

of COM).

6. If title is elected, one point for each year since election (to correspond to condition 8 of

COM).

Algorithm

Based on the above, calculate COM/COR x 100 to generate two scores: One considering all

EIRs ever submitted by the institution, and one for only the past 5 years.

The 5-year score is important for peer comparisons. Otherwise, each point of (non)compliance

will matter less and less the longer the institution has been reporting, and those with long
histories could not be accurately compared against institutions with shorter reporting histories.

By contrast, the overall score is an internal metric the institution can use to measure how much

compliance clean-up may be necessary to bring older EIRs into compliance.

Caveats

It must be stressed to users that this score is based solely on iEdison data. It does not consider

inventions which have never been reported, since the funding agencies (and the algorithm)

have no knowledge of those inventions. Also, it does not consider compliance with agencies

that do not use iEdison, since that data cannot be tracked.

With a feasible amount of SQL code (and perhaps some modifications to the algorithm after

NIST review), a compliance score could prove a useful, easily implementable tool to help

institutions track their compliance success.