March-in rights

March-in rights are the federal government's power under the Bayh-Dole Act (35 U.S.C. 203) to require the owner of a federally funded invention to license it to others, or to license it itself, in defined circumstances: the invention isn't being made available on reasonable terms, health or safety needs aren't being met, public-use requirements aren't satisfied, or the US manufacturing preference has been breached.

How it works in a university-industry collaboration

For a sponsor licensing a university invention that had federal funding behind it, march-in rights sit in the risk register because the license is, in principle, subject to them. In practice they've never been used. The Government Accountability Office reported in February 2026 that agencies have never exercised march-in rights, and cited research finding that of 883 new drugs approved from 1985 to 2022, 68 had at least one government-interest patent and only 18 were covered entirely by them (GAO-26-107885, citing Ouellette and Sampat, 2024). A 2023 draft framework that would have let agencies consider price when deciding whether to march in was the subject of the GAO review, and the debate continues, but the rights themselves have stayed on paper for more than four decades.

What a sponsor can do is check, before licensing, which federal awards funded the work (the university's technology transfer office will know), confirm the university met its disclosure and election deadlines, and plan US manufacturing where the invention will be sold in the US, since a waiver of that preference is the one condition the sponsor controls.

Translation Box: march-in rights

On the academic side: a clause the technology transfer office explains once a year to a worried licensee, and a political argument about drug prices.

On the industry side: sometimes imagined as a government claw-back of the whole invention. It isn't. It's a compulsory license, never yet granted, on specific statutory grounds.

What Helikon does with it

Nothing specific. The agreement and its funding history live with the project, and a researcher's Funding tab on Helikon shows the federal awards behind their work, which is where the question starts.