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Throughout history, many innovative ideas have been realized and brought to life within federal laboratories across the country. From this, it was discovered that there needed to be policies in place to ensure that federal institutions could properly report out about those inventions. The Bayh-Dole Act was ratified in 1980 to deal with inventions that came to fruition in federally funded laboratories. This landmark act provided an easily managed landscape for government agencies to oversee the discoveries from the multi-million, federally sponsored research and development programs. NIST has six major laboratory programs with a vision to stimulate innovation, foster industrial competitiveness, and improve the quality of life and the Bayh-Dole act plays a significant role in NIST inventions.