My invention brought clean water to millions. Don’t rewrite the law that made it possible

When was the last time you washed your hands, took a shower, or had a glass of water? Probably this very day. But more than half the world’s population can’t take these activities for granted. For 4.4 billion people, the only water available is unsafe to drink, and risky to use for other activities too. That’s because in developing nations like India — where I was born and raised — outbreaks from waterborne diseases like typhoid and cholera are ubiquitous.

In the early 1990s, I was working as a physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (“Berkeley Lab”) when I heard about a devastating cholera outbreak in my home country. It infected hundreds of thousands of people and killed more than 2,000. With vast scientific resources at my disposal at the lab, I knew I might be able help prevent the next outbreak. So, on my own time, I started to study waterborne pathogens with the aim to develop a new way to make water drinkable that would be affordable and effective in rural areas of low income countries.

In a short few years, and later on with funding support from the Energy Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, I came up with an invention — the UV Waterworks — that met all my goals. It was inexpensive, efficient, portable and effective.

Roughly the size of a microwave, the device sanitizes water using UV light to kill harmful bacteria, viruses and molds. It can purify approximately four gallons of water per minute and provide a year’s worth of potable drinking water for just seven cents per person. That’s less than 5% of the 2024 average cost of a single 16.9-fluid-ounce bottle of water in the United States.

My goal was to save lives, not make money, so I wanted my invention to be as widely available as possible. But I didn’t know how to get it into the hands of the public. At first, I considered releasing the blueprints online for anyone to download and use freely. But after meeting with the licensing staff at Berkeley Lab, I learned that this wasn’t the best approach.

Someone had to take a business risk and shoulder the cost of production. And no company was going to take on that risk without a patent and an exclusive license, without which finding investors would have been almost impossible. Moreover, putting my invention on the web wouldn’t have democratized it effectively, as the people who needed it most likely didn’t have access to the internet, much less the technical, management and financial capacity to manufacture and distribute a novel product.

Want more health and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon’s weekly newsletter Lab Notes.

The University of California, which runs the lab, filed the initial patent. I helped found WaterHealth International, which exclusively licensed the UV Waterworks technology from the university in 1996. This allowed us to attract funds to build the product on a mass scale. In the time since, the invention has benefited tens of million people across India and Africa. Roughly 80% of our customers live below the poverty line in their home countries.

None of this could have happened without a little-known 1980 law called the Bayh-Dole Act, which allows academic institutions that receive public funds to retain patent rights to their own inventions.

Before Bayh-Dole, the U.S. government held the patent rights to any discovery developed with taxpayer support. But as federal agencies had little capacity to commercialize these breakthroughs, they rarely did. By 1980, the government had licensed less than 5% of the patents it held — leaving potentially lifesaving inventions on the shelf.

But the Bayh-Dole Act changed that waste of taxpayer supported research. It allows universities to own and license inventions they make with government support — and they did so in droves. In the four-plus decades since Bayh-Dole, the law has facilitated nearly half a million invention disclosures; led to the founding of more than 17,000 startups; supported 6.5 million jobs, and contributed $1 trillion to the U.S. gross domestic product, according to AUTM, an organization that tracks public-private tech transfer.

Nevertheless, the law has been criticized by those who object to any private-sector use of academic research, no matter the benefits. Most recently, the White House proposed a policy change that would allow the government to “march in” and relicense certain patents — taking the rights from one company to give to another — on products it deems too expensive.

But this policy could drive investment away from any innovation that once received government funds. If it had been in place when I developed UV Waterworks, that invention might still be just an academic curiosity, and never been commercialized improving health outcomes for millions of people in need.

Technological advancement is the key to solving today’s most pressing issues, including the climate crisis, pandemics and world hunger. The Bayh-Dole Act helps both universities and companies continue to innovate. Undermining it would quite literally be a disservice to humanity.