Selecting the best interns for your particular technology portfolio is very important. But even the best interns will flounder if improperly trained. Fuentek (and our client) learned this lesson very well in a case in which we were asked to help set up a summer internship program.
I’m getting really excited about the upcoming NC FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics competition, April 7-9 at Dorton Arena in Raleigh! The 36 teams from across the state are gearing up to participate in this fant …
After more than 15 years of working directly with tech transfer programs at major research universities and other large institutions in the U.S. and abroad, we at Fuentek have learned that centralization, coordination, and even consolidation of TTOs can go a long way toward making commercialization of university innovations more effective.
I am all in favor of streamlining in licensing activities, and standard agreements are definitely a useful tool. But they are best when used judiciously and in certain specific situations rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach.
As I write this, I am at the Vegas airport awaiting my flight home from the annual meeting of the Association of University Technology Managers®. At the closing reception last night, I heard many people say that AUTM2011 was the best meeting yet and th …
The calm before the storm: Laura Schoppe gets grounded at Booth #305 on the first day of AUTM2011. As you know from my last post, I’m in Las Vegas right now for the annual AUTM® meeting. Our Fuentek booth (#305) is up, and we’re having lots of great di …
Negotiating royalties is challenging under the best of circumstances. In this post, I outline several real-world examples of successes, near-failures, and collapsed deals.
Laura will miss her pups while in Vegas for a week at AUTM2011! Tomorrow morning I head over to RDU airport to fly to Las Vegas for the annual conference of the Association of University Technology Managers®. It’s going to be a busy week, especially no …
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has recently announced a new program to allow companies to pay $4,000 (rather than the standard ~$1,000) to have the review of a patent application expedited. Currently patents take about 35 months to process to final action (25 months for the first action).
Last week I read an interesting article on Beyond the First World. Terry Young discussed four reasons for establishing a technology transfer office (TTO) at universities. Making money was not on that list, and I agree that TTOs (wherever they are) can’t and shouldn’t have “make a lot of money” as their main goal. If making money were the main goal, many a TTO not only would be disappointed when it inevitably failed to achieve this goal, but it would miss out on some strategic and other qualitative successes.
