In 1980, the US government passed the Bayh-Dole Act which gave universities and other institutions receiving government research funding the right to own the inventions that arose from their federally-funded research. This law is viewed as a catalyst to getting scientific research funded by the US government into products that help society or reach consumers. Once a researcher has a new invention, a university typically assesses it to determine its potential value and patentability. After a patent has been filed, the university can begin its efforts to license the rights covered by the patent to companies which then make products based on that patented invention. In this way, a lot of people benefit - consumers get new products, industry makes more money to create jobs, universities get more money to fund more research, and inventors get to benefit financially from their ingenuity.

In my current position, I work for a couple different technology transfer offices. Technology transfer offices at a university are an interesting environment that combines the non-profit aspects of higher education with the big business aspects of trying to sell a product, ie. the university's patents. While we deal with millions of dollars each year and try to maximize licensing revenue, we do not have direct competitors like an auto manufacturer or an online retailing giant does. Obviously we compete with other licensing offices for the attention and licensing budgets of businesses, but we don't compete in any traditional sense. This dual profit and non-profit style leads to some interesting benefits.

There's a relatively steady and stable support system of the university that keeps the department in operation and makes it possible to not completely focus on the bottom line. In business, every time IT asks for budget, it can be difficult to demonstrate how a cost is needed or what benefit might be gained. In most university departments, people have the same issue except creating something that can positively impact the bottom line is very difficult. There are no IT improvements that will bring more sales into an academic university department, mainly just improvements that improve the quality of life for faculty and students. However, having customers in the form of licensees, we can do IT projects that improve customer relations and perhaps generate more licensing opportunities.

Not being in direct competition with our peer institutions, it makes it possible to network with other IT professionals at tech transfer offices without worrying about giving away information or knowledge that could be seen as competitive advantage. The Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) is a society that links together tech transfer organizations around the world, primarily discussing issues and operations of tech transfer in general. In the last couple months, I have begun to build a network of tech transfer IT people to share ideas and maybe even share some solutions.

If you're involved with IT management or implementation in a tech transfer office, feel free to contact me about getting on board networking with other tech transfer IT professionals.