In a letter sent to Harvard President Alan M. Garber on Friday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick alleges the university failed to follow several regulations outlined in federal law.

The Trump administration is opening a new front in its battle with Harvard University on the issue of patents, marking a new escalation with the elite school that could result in the loss of additional federal funding or intellectual property rights.

The Trump administration on Friday launched an investigation into Harvard’s patents derived from federally funded research, threatening intellectual property potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars.