Government royalties on sales of biomedical products developed with substantial public funding.

Abstract

This paper proposes a policy of royalties paid to the government on the sales of biomedical products developed with public funds. The proposed policy would increase the incentives to create and to transfer to the private sector useful biomedical inventions from the research done in federal laboratories and in universities. The royalties policy would also address the concern that taxpayers pay prices perceived to be unreasonable for biomedical products developed with substantial taxpayer funding.