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The iEdison platform was designed in the 1990’s by the National Institute of Health as a means for awardees of federal funding to report their inventions. Through one aspect of the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, it became mandated for entities to report any inventions and patents that resulted from federal research funding. The iEdison database was the answer to the Bayh-Dole Act to catalogue and maintain the federally funded inventions. iEdison did an excellent job as the hub for these technologies, but as the 21st century came around and patent law as well as the Bayh-Dole regulations evolved, the federal government wanted to upgrade the platform to keep up with current technology and regulatory requirements.
As the agency designated by the Department of Commerce to manage the Bayh-Dole regulations, NIST was tasked to redesign, modernize, and manage iEdison. NIST immediately put out a request for information to the end users of iEdison for any and all thoughts on what worked for them and what could be changed in the system. NIST received a ton of great information through this, but they needed an expert to help guide the process.
One of the duties of the Technology Partnerships Office (TPO) at NIST is handling interagency issues like Bayh-Dole and so TPO sought out an iEdison expert to help rebuild the platform. TPO soon brought on Bethany Loftin to the team. Bethany, before coming to NIST, had worked with an intellectual property consulting firm, wherein she helped technology transfer offices accomplish their objectives. While she was there, she noticed that many times she helped offices with Bayh-Dole compliance and iEdison reporting. Bethany soon found herself in the iEdison system on a consistent basis and her knowledge of the database exponentially increased. From there, she be ..
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