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I work in tech transfer office of a major research university. We are responsible for protecting the IP of our inventors and licensing it. We work hard to get
by samch 12y ago
I work in tech transfer office of a major research university. We are responsible for protecting the IP of our inventors and licensing it. We work hard to get research from the lab out into industry where it can have the broadest application and best chance for making an impact. For biological and pharmaceutical technologies, it can take quite some time to make this transition, and there is often a lot of risk that techniques which work well in the lab may fail when scaled or otherwise adapted for industry. Clinical trials take a lot of time and money, and the FDA review process is stringent. Those are all risks shouldered by our commercial partners whether they be start-ups or large multi-nationals. For our part, we need to make sure that they have the protection they need to carry those risks over a span of years until a product can make it to market. That protection starts as soon as we first file a provisional patent for a technology and continues through the patent lifecycle (continuations, divisionals, international phase, etc). There is a large cost to this from a university perspective, and we are provided with the budget to handle that (federal funds are not used to cover the patent costs).
We are also very selective in how we license these technologies. The split is generally between exclusive and non-exclusive licensing, and we try to make the best call given the particular technology we're dealing with. In many cases, the technology is quite specific and there may only be a handful of companies in need of it. In many other scenarios we recognize the potentially broad application of the technology and work out ways to license it non-exclusively. There are also times when corporate partners aren't ready to bite due to the lack of maturity of the innovation. In those cases, we can help spin off startups to continue the development of the technology until it has reached a stage where it is more attractive to investors.
One of the most important parts of this whole process is the royalty side of things. Since we are able to protect the IP and license it responsibly, our office generates a large amount of revenue. That money goes back to the university in a somewhat-complex system of distributions where the inventor's department and lab get a cut to help continue their research. Importantly, the inventors themselves also get direct payouts from the licensing revenue. I think we can all agree that if we were unable to patent and license their inventions, then they would not be able to share in the success of their efforts.
* Full disclosure: We have licensed IP to the company mentioned in this article
- maxerickson 12y agoindustry where it can have the broadest application and best chance for making an impact Does impact there ever have a definition other than 'revenue for the university'? I realize this is a somewhat pointed question, perhaps even obnoxious, but if the answer is otherwise, I'm wondering why bureaucrats in a tech transfer office are the ones deciding when it is proper to forgo revenue for some other societal benefit?
- samch 12y agoIt's difficult to divorce the ideas of revenue and benefit. We're not talking about open-source software here. We're talking about pharmaceutical products and getting those to market so that those in need can start benefiting from our advancements. We get our cut of the revenue when our commercial partners are successful. If our technologies can be scaled and make it through trials, then everybody wins. Patients have a safe treatment, the drug companies can recover costs and continue to spend on R&D, and our researchers get their share. Also, we are not bureaucrats. We are former doctors and researchers ourselves. Many of us have worked for startups and are well-connected to the the VC world. We are better-equipped than most to identify partnerships that will lead to a successful transfer of technologies from lab to industry.
- maxerickson 12y agoThe role you describe is bureaucratic, regardless of the qualifications brought to bear. It's difficult to divorce the ideas of revenue and benefit. was my point. To me it looks like you say "impact" out of concern that "revenue" might be interpreted as crass.
- samch 12y agoBy your same logic, why would a researcher devote decades to making an impact in their field? Is it purely altruistic? Is it because they love to see their articles cited in journals? Is it because their technologies can be licensed and put into broad use? It's hard to picture a case where we would broadly open a patent for anybody to use at no cost. In cases where that would be the likely outcome, we simply won't bother patenting the technology, and allow it to be published without protection if the researcher so chooses. We are no blindly profit-seeking on behalf of the university, however. We are good partners in negotiation and understand the cases where certain technologies might have immense value to some but won't generate a large amount for the university. We often invest a lot of time and money into technologies that don't necessarily end up making the impact our researchers had hoped. Maybe the tech couldn't be adapted to work at scale or maybe it couldn't pass clinical trials. There are also the cases where we work hard to find partners for orphan drugs. That is a critical area of medicine that in by no means lucrative, but it can make a huge impact to a small population of patients. One success we've had in that area was Myozyme [1]. And not to be pedantic, but since we're on HN, I figured I'd clarify that we really don't fit any accepted definition of bureaucratic [2]. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alglucosidase_alfa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alglucosidase_alfa 2. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bureaucracy http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bureaucracy