Sponsors (2)
The bill strengthens federal tools to protect sensitive U.S. research and IP from foreign state actors by creating clearer prohibitions, enforcement, and fast designation authority — but it risks slowing academic and industry collaboration, imposing compliance costs and large penalties, and concentrating executive power with limited judicial review.
Universities, researchers, and taxpayers gain stronger protections that keep IP from sensitive research in U.S. hands and deter risky transfers to foreign state actors (clear penalties, seizure authority, and enforcement mechanisms).
Federal leaders (Secretary of State and other executive agencies) get clearer, faster authority to identify and restrict interactions with threatening foreign nations, enabling more rapid national-security and export/research restrictions.
Universities and researchers gain clearer legal rules and a narrower defined scope for covered activity (including linkage to established INA designations), reducing some legal uncertainty about which collaborations and IP fall under the law.
Researchers, students, and universities are likely to lose collaboration and funding opportunities with foreign entities (and face slower research progress) because of new restrictions and broader prohibitions on covered research and partners.
Individuals and institutions lose meaningful oversight and judicial review over executive designations and covered-research determinations, concentrating power in the Secretary of State and increasing risk of arbitrary or politically influenced restrictions.
Broad and overlapping definitions (e.g., of 'covered research', 'covered foreign government', and 'intellectual property rights') and cross-references to other statutes create compliance uncertainty and administrative burdens for universities, slowing technology transfer and increasing costs.
Based on analysis of 7 sections of legislative text.
Bars U.S. universities and affiliates from transferring IP in university-developed research to certain foreign governments and creates civil penalties and forfeiture for violations.
Introduced February 11, 2026 by Troy E. Nehls · Last progress February 11, 2026
Prohibits U.S. universities, their faculty, staff, and students from transferring intellectual property rights in university-developed research to certain foreign governments and sets civil penalties and forfeiture for violations. The Secretary of State defines which nations are “prohibited,” determines whether a transfer threatens national security, and those determinations are committed to agency discretion with very limited judicial review.