Research Enterprise

There is talk around about “high risk, high return” investments. Here is a thoroughly typical talk by Epic Ventures (web site since abandoned) to a state “Energy Advisory Board.” This is speculative investment capital talk, for the most part, from folks with enough money to be able to withstand losses. It’s rather their competitive advantage, that they can try things others might not, fail a lot, and then hit it big.

Some university tech transfer folks have picked up this language and use it in a kind of naive imitative way to sell the idea that they are doing something important, like they were rich investment types “helping the university to monetize its patent assets through commercialization.”

But really, what are universities doing to deal in high risk? Universities invest virtually nothing other than fronting patenting expenses. Sponsors of research might put their money at risk. Faculty may risk their careers to go off topic or try something utterly untested. But where’s the risk to the university, and why should it be a virtue to deal in liabilities? Continue reading →

There are some assumptions of university technology administration that are worth making visible.  These include:

• It is better to get an invention disclosure early than later
• It is better to use a patent monopoly than other approaches
• It is better for a university to own inventions than not
• It is better to license exclusively than non-exclusively
• It is better to license than to waive or assign
• It is better to treat software like an invention than the other way around
• It is better to have rules and principles than not
• It is better to pre-state the royalty sharing than to negotiate
• It is better to have a take-it-or-leave-it standard license than to negotiate
• It is better to rely on administrators than on inventors

These sorts of assumptions are part of the package that university technology licensing offices are seeking to install uniformly across the country.  From an administrative perspective, what is there not to like?  what doesn’t have a great rationale?  Who could possibly want an administrative practice without rules, say?  That would be nonsense, wouldn’t it?  How could an inventor know as much as a skilled, trained administrative professional?

From the perspective of research, science, and innovation, however, it’s hard to like any of those “better” things.  Continue reading →

I’m looking for recent stories in which a university technology licensing office “did the right thing” and released its interest in an invention even though it had reason to believe that the invention was not worthless.   I am especially interested in instances in which the university office had a right under its policy or extramural contract or employment agreement to require assignment and declined, or having obtained assignment, reassigned.

I am not interested in situations in which a university licensing office reviewed an invention and found that it had no right to claim the invention and so did not.  That is “the correct thing” but it’s not very interesting.  Furthermore, I’m not interested in the waiver of stuff found to be non-patentable over prior art or too poorly developed to be reviewable or past the bar date.  I am less interested in waiver of ownership where there are strings attached (such as paying the university’s patenting costs, or owing the university a share of royalties), but there may be some value in such stories. Continue reading →

A while ago I wrote about the CANVIS approach to modes of university innovation practice. Even longer ago, I described the five main productive approaches to IP management–WASTE. We can now put these together to frame a matrix of activities that help to situate where IP management and university responsibilities come together. Continue reading →