The following is a list of the articles that appear in the June 2009 issue of Technology Transfer Tactics monthly newsletter. If you are already a current subscriber click here to log in and access your issue. Not a subscriber already? Subscribe now and get access to this issue as well as access to our online archive of back issues, industry research reports, sample MTAs, legal opinions, sample forms and contracts, government documents and more!

Technology Transfer Tactics,
Vol. 3, No. 6 (pp 81-96) June 2009

• TTOs take part in mad scramble for research dollars. Technology transfer offices are hardly immune to the severe economic difficulties faced by their parent organizations and the larger communities they serve, but moods are beginning to brighten just a tad in the wake of President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package, which includes unprecedented sums for scientific research across a broad spectrum including energy, healthcare, education, and telecommunications. In fact, universities and other research institutions across the country are engaged in a mad scramble to fashion proposals that meet stimulus requirements for job creation, accountability, and other agency-specific mandates ……… p. 81
• Examine COI policies as big pharmas take bigger stake in early-stage research. A decade ago, researchers working on novel therapies who sought financial support from large pharmaceutical companies invariably went away empty handed. Flush with their own extensive pipelines, big pharmas were content to sit on the sidelines until research discoveries were well along their way in clinical trials. Then, they would swoop in with a standard licensing agreement, generally providing royalties linked to future commercial sales but rarely offering reimbursement for years of upfront research ……… p. 81
• Model for patent protection at Virginia Tech speeds up commercialization process, but challenges remain. What happens when a faculty inventor’s desire to rush his results into publication collides with the TTO’s efforts to protect the new discovery? Often times, unfortunately, the university loses out on the right to patent or reap any financial rewards from the innovation. By 2003, Fred Lee, PhD, the director of the Center for Power Electronics Systems (CPES), an industry consortium assembled by Blacksburg-based Virginia Tech, had seen this scenario play out so many times that he was determined to come up with a better way ……… p. 82
• TTO uses technology to target IP management/marketing gains. The Intellectual Property Management Office at the University of Oklahoma is taking a unique technical approach to secure, manage, and market its portfolio of intellectual property, with a goal of boosting the number of licensing deals. If the high-tech strategy works, the TTO will be better equipped to navigate through the current economic crisis and beyond, says Cameron J. McCoy, director of technology marketing ……… p. 83
• ‘Trolls’ have a thing or two to teach TTOs about patent protection. While some of the activities regularly undertaken by patent ‘trolls’ offend the sensibilities of most universities, TTOs might be able to draw some valuable lessons and perhaps even emulate one of their key strategies — patent aggregation, argues one prominent patent litigator. In fact, he notes, aggregation could be quite effective when it comes to protecting university IP ……… p. 93
• Florida start-ups to double with integrated statewide program. University TTOs are charged, among other missions, with using research results as magnets for economic development in their communities. Florida schools are finding that combining forces, rather than having each university striving for job creation alone, can build major momentum and have a far greater impact on a state’s economy ……… p. 95

Posted June 23rd, 2009 under Current Issue