Citing a gap in the models currently used to bring academic research to the marketplace, an “inventor” has applied for a U.S. patent (USPTO Application #: 20080201193) for what is claimed as a novel method for commercializing university-developed technologies. The novelty, says applicant Jan Buck, is in creating an independent operating company whose business is to generate cash and profits on its own account “from the full panoply of commercialization vehicles as needed to achieve the business plan rather than the happenstance needs of the target technologies,” the application abstract reads. It also states that the patented business method would “enhance shareholder value in the company itself independent and apart from the projects and ventures it develops in its business.”
In making the case for novelty, the applicant lists the other “known models for general technology commercialization” including VCs, TTOs, university-affiliated commercialization entities, incubators, management companies, and public commercialization companies. Each one falls short of a profit-focused operating company envisioned by the patent, Buck claims. VCs intend to turn a relatively short-term profit on investor funding, TTOs are administrative offices that do not generally profit on their activities and return their license fees to the university, and affiliated commercialization entities such as Arch Capital — co-owned by Argonne Labs and the University of Chicago — are designed “to generate cash for their affiliated organizations and not operate solely for their own account.” The closest kin to the application’s method are the public commercialization companies (PCCs) that have recently appeared primarily in the UK and gone public, notably Imperial Innovations Plc and IP Group Plc, spun out of London’s Imperial College and Kings College, respectively. “While a PCC is intended to be a business, which a public listing would require, its technology base is limited; the PCC largely focuses on licensing, and it does not appear to have a plan for profitably conducting a going concern. It does not appear that either of the specified PCCs provides significant incubation help or development activity,” the application states, concluding that “no mechanism has yet been devised to make commercialization itself a sustainable and productive engine for monetizing academic research to support a profitable and growing going concern.”
The business method patent, according to its application, offers a model “distinct from other known technology commercialization models” in its organization as an operating company with a solitary focus on generating profits in accordance with a business plan. “This is in contrast to the traditional one-off model in which a single technology or related group of technologies is commercialized into a business in and of itself. In accordance with the present inventive methods, such a technology commercialized in the traditional one-off model would form only one component (such as a project and/or venture) … of the independent operating entity contemplated herein,” the application continues. The entity would include a venture fund vehicle to help commercialize early stage research and would also generate fee income from industry customers. Those fees would be used as additional investment capital for new projects and ventures, as would funds generated by “liquidity events” of individual projects.
We will be anxiously awaiting the USPTO’s decision on the application, as well as challenges from other commercialization entities. Go to: FreshPatents
Posted September 3rd, 2008 under Tech Transfer
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