We at Fuentek are big proponents of actively managing the intellectual property (IP) portfolio as a strategic asset. This is as important for companies as it is for universities, government agencies, and the like. So, Fuentek teamed up with PatSnap to offer a series of free webinars to help companies get the most out of their IP portfolios. Today’s post provides an overview of—and, more importantly, easy links to—that webinar series.
Lots of best practices for technology transfer offices (TTOs) also apply to startups. To leverage that insight, I recently spoke with entrepreneurs in New Hampshire about how to get great feedback from prospective customers when getting a startup off the ground, offering a new product (or service), or breaking into a new market. Similarly, in the tech transfer world, licensing success can be optimized by obtaining robust and comprehensive market feedback through expert interviews. This feedback will inform your strategy for approaching the market as you ramp up to marketing a technology for licensing. For example,…
I’m back, with another post about the AUTM® Eastern Region Meeting, which I first blogged about last week. Today’s topic: The workshop session “Strategies to Offload Patents that Are Doing Nothing for Too Long.” This session, which I came to think of as the “couch-potato patent session,” was moderated by…
Last week, a tech transfer professional at a university asked me which patent analysis tools Fuentek uses in our market-based technology assessments. Our conversation then evolved into a discussion about how we use patent mapping as well as the value patent maps provide in evaluating a technology’s commercial potential. I’d like to share with you the perspective that I shared with him. Let me begin by being crystal clear: I firmly believe that analysis tools providing visual maps of the patent landscape play a useful role in…
Ramping up to successful and cost-effective technology transfer marketing depends not only on a range of proactive research activities but also on thinking through the licensing strategy and a sound marketing plan to help you achieve your goals. The Technology Licensing Strategy A licensing strategy need not be complex or even necessarily written down (although more mature offices may track it as a field in their IP management database). Nevertheless, it is worth taking the time to explicitly think about (1) what your goals are for the technology and (2) what type of licenses and licensees you should seek to meet those goals.
The impending shift from a “first to invent” to a “first inventor to file” structure under the recently passed America Invents Act is causing quite a bit of turmoil in the technology transfer industry. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has provided some explanations via FAQs and a letter from director Kappos, yet the rumblings continue. Some in the industry suggest that the appropriate response is to file quick-and-dirty provisionals on virtually everything that comes in the door. I’m sure technology transfer offices (TTOs) hear this advice. But I sincerely hope they do not heed it.
Though it may be tempting to jump immediately into marketing an exciting technology that seems bound for tech transfer success, it’s important to look before you leap to ensure you’re making the best decisions about where to allocate your finite time and resources. Proactive research and planning is critical for developing marketing strategies that are efficient and cost-effective. We’ve blogged about this in our posts about the initial rapid screening and the more in-depth market-based assessment—the two steps for making informed commercialization decisions. The market-based assessment is so essential to technology transfer success that Fuentek has released a free webcast about it.
In working on technology assessments, it’s important to consider the most critical factors in order to efficiently determine the commercialization potential of your technology. After you’ve done all of your market-based assessment research, you should have a pretty good gut feeling about the commercialization potential of the technology. So to verify that your gut is right, we find that it’s often sufficient to evaluate just a few key factors in your final analysis rather than get mired down in a lengthy list.
Has your tech transfer office set some resolutions for 2012? I’ve been doing some thinking about that, particularly in the context of the political landscape of late that TTOs must navigate. It’s certainly not news that in the last few years politics has been wagging the dog when it comes to tech transfer. And 2011 was no exception. For example, there was a big push toward using tech transfer to generate economic development and startups. But well-intentioned policies are not always aligned with what really brings value to technology communities, not to mention the universities and government labs where the technologies originate.
When moving from the screening into the assessment phase of IP management, it’s important to keep an open mind—and open ears—during the market-based assessment. I say “ears” because Fuentek assessments include interviews with industry experts, which provide extremely valuable market information that guides decisions about how, where, and when—or even whether—to begin marketing the technology. Listening carefully to what industry experts have to say about the market’s needs with respect to the technology lets you know which action is most appropriate. And in some cases, this means not merely holding off on marketing but actually stopping the assessment early. Let’s take a look at a real-world example.
