Technology transfer should be a high priority for research universities, but they should become more realistic about the limited potential for making lots of money from the commercialization of their research, says a new report from the National Academy of Sciences.
When it comes to making money, "the likelihood of success is small, the probability of disappointed expectations high, and the risk of distorting and narrowing" the dissemination of new knowledge broadly in society through other means is exacerbated, warns the report, "Managing University Intellectual Property in the Public Interest."
Developed by a panel of 18 academic and industry officials over the past two years, the report's 15 recommendations also include a call for universities and federal science agencies to devise a system to better measure the broader social and economic impact of technology transfer. Such a new system, the report says, should go beyond existing surveys that now tally things like patents, licenses, and royalty income.
Perhaps reflecting the interests of its corporate members and the complaints often raised by industry about universities' driving hard bargains for the commercial rights to their intellectual property, the report recommends that institutions be more generous in offering terms to research sponsors in industry and be more willing to give them full ownership of research they have sponsored. (The Rochester Institute of Technology and other institutions have been experimenting with such a model.)
The report rejects suggestions like the "free-agency" proposal pushed by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which would allow faculty inventors greater leeway in managing how their research findings are commercialized with approval from their university. But the report does urge universities to rely more heavily on the expertise of faculty members and experienced business people in day-to-day operations and oversight of their often-criticized technology-transfer operations.
Comments
1. dboyles - October 04, 2010 at 05:02 pm
The NAS report is on target, as many if not most institutions other than major universities are unable to shoulder the costs of patent maintenance, marketing, and technology transfer offices. Why small-to-medium universities take federal grant money leading to faculty inventions but cannot or refuse to shoulder the responsibility of securing the intellectual property of their faculties for the good of the economy (the purpose of a patent http://www.jsonline.com/business/54199852.html) is the question. It was the premise of the Bayh-Dole Act that they would, other fallacies of the Act notwithstanding (eg, shifting the burden of technology transfer from the corporate sector to the public sector). If universities are unable to deliver on commercializing inventions in the public good, however, it is fanciful to now think that shifing their burden to individual faculty members is going to transform the economy, as individuals hardly have the financial capital in place to patent and maintain an invention, not to mention consideration of the high failure rate of any small business that might result. Making the Bayh-Dole Act now effectively pertain to individuals moves it one step further from the realm of the possible within the university to the realm of the impossible of the individual. As a chemistry faculty member engaged in organic and polymer synthesis I have federally funded research and 90+ percent of anything my group does in the laboratory results in a patentable new composition of matter. The federal government sponsoring the research leading to inventions isn't going to patent (as per the Bayh-Dole act), the institutions can't (or say they can't, or--and more likely--refuse to make intellectual property a priority since current administrations aren't interested in patent pay-offs which may be toward the end of a 20 year patent lifetime, long past the tenure of the administrators themselves), and now the faculty member is supposed to shoulder these costs in addition to bringing in an overhead stream from federally-funded research to maintain an active research program? There is something seriously wrong with this picture. From the start one would think that public institutions sound enough to take federal monies to do research would be mandated by law in the interests of accountability to the public to be stewards of resulting intellectual discoveries of their faculties to the wider interest of the public good. If they can't do this--and many smaller institutions evidently don't--one must question what additional corners are being cut in terms of research (secretary support? library services? release time?)that compound the detriment to quality research let alone its commercialization. It is time someone looks at the larger picture if the purpose of a patent, namely, stimulation of the economy, is to have any meaning whatsoever. Hoping faculties are the answer to this problem is nothing but wishful thinking.