The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 expressly gave colleges, universities, and other nonprofit entities the right, which had previously been presumptively held by the federal government itself, to patent inventions resulting from federally funded research and development (R&D) activities they conduct. In the nearly three decades since the Bayh-Dole Act changed the nation's patent laws, some academic institutions have been much more prolific than others at patenting technologies and other inventions discovered in their laboratories. There is substantial interest in better understanding the link between federal funding and innovation among U.S. colleges and universities. This report contributes to such improved understanding in two ways. First, it provides data, heretofore unavailable, that contain complete information laboriously extracted from official federal data systems on the amount of federal R&D funding that was actually provided to U.S. colleges and universities by fiscal year (FY) and by federal agency. These data will be of use to researchers interested in examining a number of issues related to federal funding of R&D at universities and colleges. Secondly, the report uses these data to provide an exploratory analysis of federal R&D funding and the patenting activities at universities and colleges using funding data from FY 2005 to describe the characteristics of academic institutions that have shown a greater propensity to patent since the Bayh-Dole Act was passed. The report is organized into five chapters. Following an introduction, Chapter Two provides details about the data and the methodology used to examine the federal R&D funding and the patenting activities at universities and colleges in the United States. Chapter Three presents the findings of the authors' analysis of the relationship between federal R&D funds provided to and the patenting activities of universities and colleges. Chapter Four provides a discussion of the types of R&D work that federal agencies fund (i.e., Basic Research, Applied Research, and Development) and the potential implications for the production of patentable technologies. Chapter Five presents the authors' main conclusions and explores the implications of this analysis for future discussions. Following Chapter Five, Appendix A describes the comprehensive data outputs the authors created on federal R&D funding, by federal agency and fiscal year. This appendix describes the underlying data from which the sets of data were created, discusses the caveats and limitations of the data, and provides information about the specific version of the data used and an overview of the data fields. Appendix B provides supporting information for the descriptive analysis presented in the body of the report. Specifically, it contains 27 tables that present data on the differences in federal R&D funding by academic institution. The RAND web site contains supplemental files of Excel spreadsheets that provide information on federal R&D funding (obligations) to universities and colleges in support of research and development activities by fiscal year for FY 1993-2006. A glossary and bibliography are included. (Contains 35 tables.) [This research was conducted within the Kauffman-RAND Institute for Entrepreneurship Public Policy in the RAND Institute for Civil Justice.]