The University of Pennsylvania and Arizona State University are teaming up on technology transfer in a three-year experiment that will allow each to take advantage of the other’s expertise in commercializing the findings of their researchers.
“This is all about getting more out of your resources,” said Michael J. Cleare, executive director of Penn’s Center for Technology Transfer. “If we help one another, we will revenue-share.”
The two institutions have established a formal schedule that sets out how they will split income, depending on how much each university does for the other.
“We don’t care if we lose 10 or 15 percent” or more if it means, in the end, a deal gets done, said Mr. Cleare.
The arrangement will also make it easier for the two institutions to package together inventions developed by their respective faculty members. The inventions, when marketed together, might be more attractive to a potential licensee. In pharmaceuticals, for example, Penn has a pipeline of inventions from its medical-school faculty members that could complement the work of Arizona State’s drug-therapy researchers.
Augustine V. Cheng, managing director of Arizona Technology Enterprises, said he hoped the arrangement would help Arizona State take advantage of connections that Penn has, and vice versa.
Universities often work together on technology-transfer projects when faculty members’ research collaborations produce jointly owned inventions. The patent and licensing arm of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, also manages some technology-transfer activities for other institutions in the Wisconsin system. But this kind of collaboration between two unrelated American universities is uncommon.
The pairing is no coincidence. When Mr. Cleare ran a similar operation at Columbia University, Mr. Cheng was a key lieutenant there. At Columbia, both men worked for Michael Crow, who is now president of Arizona State and recruited Mr. Cheng.
Mr. Cleare said that, even with staff increases in his office from 20 to 30, he is sometimes hard-pressed to manage the rising tide of inventions reported by faculty members. With 350 invention disclosures a year, he said, “I need all the help I can get.” —Goldie Blumenstyk
