Greetings from Anaheim, California, where Fuentek’s Danielle McCulloch, Julie Markoski, and I are attending the annual meeting of the Association of University Technology Managers®. The conference has barely started, and we’re already very busy at this great meeting! AUTM 2012 began yesterday with a joint session with the Licensing Executives Society, which had its Winter Meeting here in the first half of the week. (And, no, it’s not coincidence that the LES and AUTM meetings are aligned like this. This was just one of several efforts this year in AUTM’s Strategic Alliances.) The two associations hosted a pair of sessions together on Wednesday. The first was called… Continue reading →
One of the items in my last “worth reading” post — Stefan Lindegaard’s blog post “Are Universities, Tech Transfer Units Open Innovation Losers?” — is getting a lot of attention, including a Technology Transfer Tactics blog post. Given the discussions in several tech transfer groups across LinkedIn (including AUTM, Techno-L, and Technology Transfer – Valorisation), I’d like to offer some further thoughts here. Open innovation refers to the spin-in as well as the spin-out of ideas, technology, etc. Approaching these two “directions” in concert and proactively — what we’ve called Symbiotic Innovation — is an essential component for revolutionizing technology transfer. 
Is your new year’s resolution to better keep up with the latest in the technology transfer industry? Then consider this blog post a helping hand. And if you have opinions about these tech transfer “good reads” or fav articles/blogs of your own, share them by posting a comment below or sending me a private message. 
I read with interest two recent news stories about technology transfer offices (TTOs) looking to increase licensing deals by addressing two oft-cited barriers: high costs and long negotiation times. The logic: Offering intellectual property (IP) at a super low cost (or even for free) and/or through non-negotiation, ready-to-sign license agreements will result in more technologies getting to market faster. These types of programs have been around for a bit (see my prior posts about free IP and ready-to-sign licenses) and the trend seems to be growing. So let’s look at the two recent examples and consider how to make these types of programs successful. 
This summer, the technology transfer office (TTO) at Vanderbilt University conducted an informal survey of members of the AUTM® directors online discussion group on TTO policies and practices regarding returning rights to inventors. I found the results from the 84 respondents intriguing, as should advocates for free agency in tech transfer (including sponsors of the current Startup Act legislation). That’s because this survey showed that the essence of free agency — that is, giving innovators the right to pursue commercialization of their technology — is already in place… and the innovators are not pursuing it. Let’s look at the data. 
A few months ago, the IP Marketing Blog discussed the OpenUlster program at the University of Ulster in Ireland and its evaluation license. It caught my attention for its efforts to streamline licensing and help mitigate the risks that potential licensees may feel when contemplating a new technology. Here’s how the blogger described it: ‘To take out an evaluation license, which costs just one Pound, the visitor just clicks on the link to download the documents, fill out two forms and return them both to Ulster. “When the license is countersigned by one of our commercialization team, the firm has exclusivity to evaluate that technology,” says [technology commercialization manager Dr. John] MacRae… At the end of the evaluation period… the evaluation license can be converted into a full commercial license.”’ 
There have been a lot of articles recently about universities giving away IP rights for free. The specifics of each vary, and most seem to have advantages that will help accelerate the transfer of technology. But some go further than others. 
Last week I gave a presentation at a tech transfer workshop for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). This workshop was well timed, given President Obama’s recent memorandum announcing a new directive requiring all federal research labs to bolster and streamline technology transfer efforts to increase the likelihood and efficiency of getting research results to market. Attendees at the DoD meeting discussed the memo as well as possible solutions, as each agency has been tasked with presenting a plan back to the President on how they will achieve his goals. Possible solutions have been at the top of my mind recently as well…. 
As you might have noticed from Fuentek’s news feed or on R&D Magazine‘s Web site, NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center has signed a licensing deal with 4DSP. I for one am pretty excited about this tech transfer success because Fuentek has supported Dryden in this effort. Long-time readers of our blog might remember our post about Dryden’s fiber optic shape sensors technology. But our support of Dryden didn’t begin there. We actually started off with a market-based assessment of the technology’s suite of innovations. 