It’s easy to get so consumed with licensing and start-up formation that details such as record keeping and monitoring take a back seat. However, seemingly small mistakes in oversight can upend commercialization efforts in a big way. Consider what the Georgia Institute of Technology is dealing with after an internal audit found evidence that resources were misappropriated from the college’s Georgia Electronic Design Center (GEDC) to benefit a company co-owned by a former director of the center and a faculty researcher. Now, four employees are suspended from the school and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is digging into the matter.

In another case, the Mayo Clinic is retracting more than a dozen scientific papers published over a period of eight years and withdrawing patent applications because of research misconduct, according to Mayo spokesman Bob Nellis. A researcher who has worked at Mayo for more than ten years has been fired amid allegations that he tampered with another person’s work. The researcher denies the charges, but commercialization efforts related to this work have been abandoned.

Would closer monitoring have picked up on either of these problems at an earlier, less costly stage? Perhaps, but these cases illustrate how difficult it can be to catch on to a rogue researcher or a long-trusted faculty member who may not even consider what he is doing is wrong. However, given the extensive consequences that can result from such problems, technology transfer veterans maintain it is not enough to have clearly enunciated procedures in place to manage funds and referee commercialization activities. You also need to be proactive in communicating these policies to your research community on an ongoing basis. And that’s just for starters.

According to Brian O’Shaughnessy, Esq., an IP specialist at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC in Alexandria, VA, who frequently works with TTOs, “there is a profound potential for abuse, conflicts of interest, and things of that nature that raise a whole host of issues that need to be monitored and investigated.” O’Shaughnessy adds: “It is not just a question of hiring a few licensing professionals and having them go out and peddle technology. They require a lot of support from the standpoint of development of policies institute-wide, implementing those policies, and making sure there is appropriate follow-up and enforcement of those policies.” The entire article and its recommendations for improved monitoring for potentially fraudulent activity appears in the July issue of Technology Transfer Tactics. To begin a subscription and access more than three years of archived issues filled with best practices and success strategies, CLICK HERE.

Posted July 28th, 2010 under Tech Transfer

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