The following is a list of the articles that appear in the September 2023 issue of Technology Transfer Tactics monthly newsletter.

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Technology Transfer Tactics
Vol. 17, No. 9, September 2023

• Data licensing opportunities abound, but deals are not without challenges. It appears, at first glance, like a no-brainer: Universities, particularly those with affiliated health care centers and organizations, have virtually immeasurable stores of data — the kind of data that companies in the forefront of areas like AI, machine learning and quantum computing would love to have. It seems like an obvious source of significant potential licensing revenue.
• Don’t undervalue or under-protect your data for use in AI systems. Artificial intelligence is making its way into virtually every industry, and tech transfer programs are finding opportunities to work with AI both as developers and as owners of data and other IP that might be joined with AI systems to make something new. But this exciting new frontier brings with it questions and challenges about how to manage co-developed innovations and address all the facets of licensing and commercialization that are more familiar in other areas.
• Executive Order on domestic manufacturing brings both relief and concern for TTOs. The Biden administration’s long-rumored Executive Order on “Federal Research and Development in Support of Domestic Manufacturing and United States Jobs” landed in late July, and while laudable in its intent, there is little indication of how it will actually affect technology transfer offices, observers say. Most are just relieved it didn’t follow in the footsteps of what has been described as the “deeply flawed” DOE policy.
• Syracuse U brings together law school and TTO to boost commercialization. A new partnership between the Office of Technology Transfer (OTT), which is housed in the Office of Research at Syracuse University (SU), and the Innovation Law Center (ILC), which is housed in the SU College of Law, is something of a poster child for collaboration. Last year, the two entities got together to test out a pilot program and, so far, it looks like it’s here to stay.
• Pitt makes internal IP portal more accessible and streamlines disclosure forms. As part of its ongoing commitment to better serve its internal customers, The Innovation Institute, an operating unit of the University of Pittsburgh’s Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, has made access to its portal for handling intellectual property management, licensing, and start-up company creation much simpler, while implementing several changes to its disclosure form in an effort to offer a more user-friendly tool. The changes took effect on July 17.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the August 2023 issue of Technology Transfer Tactics monthly newsletter.

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Technology Transfer Tactics
Vol. 17, No. 8, August 2023

• Lost gold in your portfolio? Forgotten patents can yield infringement revenue. Every TTO has files full of patents that never proved particularly successful and were eventually forgotten as the program focused on newer IP with more promise. But experts say it can be worthwhile to audit those older patents for potential infringement and turn them into new sources of revenue with an assertion strategy that can often lead to licenses and settlements.
• FSU ‘Fast Start’ program offers favorable terms and six-month free option. Florida State University recently launched a licensing program called Fast Start, a “streamlined” license process with favorable terms for FSU start-ups. As part of this program, the FSU Research Foundation (FSURF) “will grant an exclusive option (at no cost) to license the identified intellectual property for up to six months to allow the start-up company to develop a business plan and outline commercially reasonable diligence milestones.”
• Licensee welcome package helps drive 90% collection rate at NIH. The National Institutes of Health Office of Technology Transfer is achieving a 90% collection rate on average from licensees, and they attribute much of their success to a “welcome package” that provides everything the licensee needs to make required payments.
• Northwestern’s FoundHer Fellows program narrows the gender gap. The data speaks volumes about the gender gap in research commercialization and entrepreneurship. Take, for example, a 2017 study by Osage University Partners revealing that only 11% of university start-ups had a woman scientific founder or co-founder. Or more recent data from PitchBook, which shows that women-founded startups received just 1.9% of all VC funds last year. A new program at Northwestern University is aiming to do something about it.
• U Vermont taps undergrads to help its small TTO get more technology to market. Smaller tech transfer offices that struggle to devote enough time and resources to launching start-ups may want to take a page out of a new playbook being rolled out at the University of Vermont. In fact, the strategy being employed there — a novel approach utilizing undergraduates to commercialize research discoveries — could be an effective add-on for any TTO.
• To teach start-up founders, adapt these principles from Wake Forest guru’s model. A browse through Wake Forest University’s top-rated Center for Entrepreneurship website prompts a deluge of Wake grads’ business success stories across a wide array of products and services.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the July 2023 issue of Technology Transfer Tactics monthly newsletter.

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Technology Transfer Tactics
Vol. 17, No. 7, July 2023

• Adjusting faculty royalty shares can assist with recruiting, retention. The way royalty shares are split — particularly the faculty share — can be a critical factor in the success of a commercialization program, but there is no single right way to slice up the pie. Still, experts say the policy your university employs can make your campus attractive to desirable faculty, but it can also encourage them to look elsewhere for a better deal.
• Purdue and Indiana U reorganize their innovation activity into ‘umbrella’ offices. A number of leading universities have been consolidating existing units into larger “umbrella” organizations in an effort to optimize commercialization of their innovations. In many of these cases, their TTOs have taken on more prominent roles, expanding their staff and often the services they provide — particularly to other internal stakeholders. Two major Indiana-based universities have recently adopted this model to focus more heavily and, they say, more efficiently, on tech transfer, start-ups, and student entrepreneurship.
• A critical relationship opens up a global network for Baptist Health Innovations. Triventures, a global, early-stage venture capital firm, has offices in Israel and Silicon Valley. It boasts a global footprint and an established international network of top-tier strategic corporate limited partners, including the world’s leading health systems and companies, finance groups, consumer electronics enterprises, insurance companies, and telecommunication groups.
• UConn’s TTO expands its footprint by collaborating with engineering ‘eHub.’ One of the common drawbacks of being a small technology transfer office is that the staff has little time to focus on anything but its core role in shepherding faculty innovations. For many small TTOs, the rest of the campus community is rarely addressed or only “when I have time,” meaning not often. That means potentially ignoring engagement with student entrepreneurs or faculty who aren’t pursuing commercialization because the process is unfamiliar or mysterious.
• NC State looks to make the most of $900K gift to support commercialization efforts. A recent gift of $900,000 to North Carolina State University (NC State) is earmarked specifically to boost tech transfer and innovation activity at the school, and its genesis holds lessons for TTOs looking to attract philanthropic dollars to support their programs.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the June 2023 issue of Technology Transfer Tactics monthly newsletter.

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Technology Transfer Tactics
Vol. 17, No. 6, June 2023

• Purdue nets $100M in royalty monetization deal, shares its decision-making process. Purdue Research Foundation gained the attention of the tech transfer community recently with its $100 million-plus deal to monetize royalties on a cancer drug, and the long path to that accomplishment holds lessons for others who want to pursue such a windfall.
• Much to ponder when considering whether to launch IP litigation. The decision as to whether to go to court to protect your IP is rarely cut and dried, argued a panel of experts at the recent AUTM 2023 annual convention, and it’s important to consider a number of factors so that you can make a powerful case to administration on the need to move forward.
• Tech Launch Arizona co-locates licensing staff in IP-producing units. Every TTO understands the need to stay close to areas that could produce intellectual property for potential commercialization. Tech Launch Arizona (TLA) at the University of Arizona takes that concept as far as it can, embedding most of its licensing managers within various IP-producing units.
• CU-Boulder brings in outside entrepreneurs to take on deep tech orphans. Too many innovations with high potential — particularly those requiring major investments and long development timelines, which can also bring the greatest societal benefits — never make that transition due to the lack of interest on the part of the inventor to create and run a start-up. To bridge that gap, CU Boulder has developed the Embark Deep Tech Startup Creator to provide an alternate mechanism for forming a new business
• Advisory boards bring solid benefits with the right makeup and TTO support. While many TTOs have internal advisory boards or committees, external boards that focus strictly on assisting with commercialization efforts are a bit more of a unicorn.
• Denmark’s Open Entrepreneurship program: A model to emulate? Eight Danish universities have been collaborating in a commercialization model they call Open Entrepreneurship (OE), working across and beyond university boundaries to turn world-class research into industry-leading spinouts.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the May 2023 issue of Technology Transfer Tactics monthly newsletter.

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Technology Transfer Tactics
Vol. 17, No. 5, May 2023

• Focus on start-up readiness prior to inking a license agreement and improve chances of success. A common challenge for tech transfer leaders is dealing with faculty start-ups that may have a great idea but not much more. They may lack a solid business plan, have little experience in venture-building, don’t have investor interest, and lack a credible CEO or leadership team. Yet they want to license “their” IP from the university — a move that the TTO suspects will lead nowhere, at least at such an early stage and without considerable development.
• Problematic tax law change could devastate start-ups as groups push for deferral. A recent change to tax law that could have a devastating impact on university start-ups could be deferred if Congress listens to the pleas of TTOs and the research community, but companies should still plan for the impact.
• Priority review vouchers: A potential windfall for TTOs when negotiated into license. More than 15 years ago, Congress created a way to incentivize development of drugs designed to treat neglected diseases that affect mainly developing countries. Those who did so would win a prize: a voucher that could be used to get priority review from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a different drug — for example, one that might have the potential to become a blockbuster.
• Texas State experiments with paying faculty for invention disclosures. What would happen if universities paid their faculty to disclose innovations? Texas State University (TXST) is finding out. Its pay for disclosures program is still in its infancy, but based on early returns it looks like the idea will pay off in spades for the small TTO.
• ASU launches equity crowdfunding pilot as part of start-up funding strategy. For the first time, ownership stakes in Arizona State University (ASU) start-ups will be available to all through equity crowdfunding. Currently, in its pilot phase, ASU’s equity crowdfunding is just one piece of the funding support network for early-stage companies at ASU, but its one that’s touching on many different parts of the pipeline.
• NIH grant funds U New Mexico effort to train other universities in tech transfer. Technology transfer is inherently local. What works for one tech transfer office doesn’t always work for another TTO, and even when it does work, sometimes significant adaptations must be made to fit the commercialization ecosystem at that TTO’s university.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the April 2023 issue of Technology Transfer Tactics monthly newsletter.

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Technology Transfer Tactics
Vol. 17, No. 4, April 2023

• Incentive plans for TTO staff are rare but effective if properly structured. A surprisingly low percentage of tech transfer programs offer financial incentives to their staff, but those who do report that bonuses can have a positive effect on performance, recruiting, retention, and budgeting.
• NSF program looks to boost tech transfer by changing culture and faculty incentives. Imagine 100 more U.S. educational institutions transforming themselves into powerhouses of tech transfer and knowledge transfer in the next decade, on par with MIT, Stanford University, and Georgia Tech. That’s the goal of the National Science Foundation’s new Accelerating Research Translation (ART) program, part of the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to accelerate science and technology innovation in every part of the U.S.
• Proactive approaches boost faculty engagement and bring in disclosures. The keys to successful faculty engagement, shared a trio of presenters at the recent AUTM 2023 Annual Meeting, include being proactive and accessible – “meeting them where they are.” The panel offered a range of strategies for building faculty ties, improving outreach, and bringing in more disclosures.
• Guest Commentary: Survey of TTOs offers latest look at data licensing policies. Just over two years ago we wrote on the ongoing mismatch between the burgeoning importance of research data to tech transfer institutions and their formal written IP policies on the data. Here, we update the article with new insights obtained from an informal survey conducted by a working group consisting of TT professionals for approaches on licensing human-related data. Of the various questions we provided for TT professionals in the 2021 article as a framework for data IP policies, many have been answered by actual institutions in the survey results.
• UK Innovate matches staff recognition awards to operating principles. In the current environment of short staffing and competition for staff, as Tech Transfer Central’s recent salary survey showed, three quarters of TTOs offer no salary incentives, and that’s likely an even lower number among state schools. But there are other ways to motivate and retain staff, and the University of Kentucky’s staff awards program is a good example.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the March 2023 issue of Technology Transfer Tactics monthly newsletter.

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Technology Transfer Tactics
Vol. 17, No. 3, March 2023

• Lack of focus on scaling up may limit the long-term success of university-launched ventures. Scaling up is sometimes the forgotten stepchild when it comes to university start-up efforts, yet the scale-up phase is often the most important in terms of long-term success and impact: creating jobs, building revenue, and driving economic growth. Some TTOs have realized that getting a start-up formed is not enough, and that a focused effort on scale-up can greatly increase the odds of long-term success.
• Post I-Corps accelerator idea floated to bring more focus to scaling up. A new idea for start-up acceleration has been proposed that would expand the National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program, extending support for start-ups to bolster their move past the early stages and into the scale-up phase.
• Heard in the Halls: AUTM 2023. The AUTM annual meeting in Austin was back in full force and then some, two years removed from the COVID-cancelled 2021 date. Those in attendance seemed to relish the return of handshakes and hugs, while standing room only sessions and a lively exhibit hall heralded a return to normalcy. Also in good supply was a sense of optimism and excitement in the wake of CARES Act funding and its underlying recognition of tech transfer’s key role in spawning innovations that provide the raw material for U.S. global competitiveness.
• Guest Commentary: Is My Licensee in Compliance? Tips to Keep Them on Track. University TTOs spend significant time and money negotiating the terms of their license agreement, but what happens once the ink is dry and it’s business as usual? Is anyone checking to ensure compliance with the meticulously negotiated contract?
• Narrowing the gender gap and nailing down the numbers at MUSC. Recent U.S. data show that there are only 13 females for every 87 male patent holders, women comprised fewer than one-third of NIH grantees, and women-founded business receive a meager 3% to 8% of venture capital funding.
• 100% IP ownership option part of WPI’s ‘embrace’ of student start-ups. Student entrepreneurs at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Massachusetts are presented with a unique option: If they wish, those whose inventions do not involve faculty co-inventors can claim 100% ownership even if they have benefitted significantly from access to WPI labs and other resources.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the February 2023 issue of Technology Transfer Tactics monthly newsletter.

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Technology Transfer Tactics
Vol. 17, No. 2, February 2023

• Tech transfer programs move to flexible staffing strategies to meet new expectations. With tech transfer programs still getting back to some sense of normalcy after the pandemic, some are finding that the old ways of thinking about managing staff don’t hold up as well in the wake of years spent working remotely. Staff members have different expectations after seeing the benefits of working from home, and programs are having to adjust in order to recruit and retain valued employees.
• Improved relations between TTOs, development offices bring benefits for both. Observers agree that alliances between TTOs and university development offices are sometimes uneasy at best — “silo-ism” at its worst, if you will. It appears, especially to some development offices, that they are both after a large slice of the same financial “pie,” making competition more logical than cooperation. And yet, say others, that does not have to be the case.
• Happy anniversary! Tech Launch Arizona ‘projects and reflects’ with video series. To celebrate its 10th anniversary last year, Tech Launch Arizona (TLA) at the University of Arizona in Tucson employed a multi-pronged marketing approach that spotlighted its success, celebrated those who helped along the way, and provided a long-lasting boost to the program’s visibility and brand. The well-honed strategy may be worth studying as a means of marking milestones for your own TTO.
• Weizmann Institute adds new unit to bring research forward prior to TTO involvement.The Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, is one of the world’s leading multidisciplinary research institutions with a long and successful history of technology transfer. But institute leaders there also saw a weak spot in their efforts — a need for more focus on nurturing early research that might have potential applications but is not yet on the TTO’s radar.
• Student-led VCs create additional funding source for university start-ups. They may have chosen two distinctly different paths for raising their initial capital, but student-led venture funds at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Nebraska have much in common — including the creation of financing opportunities for early-stage start-ups and avenues through which student participants gain real-world experience in how VCs operate — and what they need to succeed. At the same time, of course, they help expand university activity in the support of start-ups.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the January 2023 issue of Technology Transfer Tactics monthly newsletter.

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Technology Transfer Tactics
Vol. 17, No. 1, January 2023

• Term sheet template for life science deals aims to reduce bickering and hasten license negotiations. A term sheet template for life science licensing deals developed by a group of prominent university tech transfer programs, venture capital firms, and attorneys could help eliminate much of the haggling over routine issues and establish a baseline of what is typical or most commonly found in license agreements.
• AUTM EDI toolkit suggests de-identification for grants, disclosures, job applicants. It’s common knowledge at this point that women and minority populations are vastly under-represented when it comes to the STEM professions, inventive activity, and even in tech transfer itself. There’s plenty of data to show that these groups participate in tech fields and are included in patents at far lower rates than their relative numbers. THe AUTM EDI toolkit hopes to help change that.
• Hopkins TTO encourages fast fails with “5 Vs” system of tech assessment. You’re driving a van full of your colleagues down the highway and take what you think is the right exit. But soon, your passengers provide feedback that the landscape is all wrong. You’ve made an error and taken a wrong turn. Do you continue down that road or turn back to find the right exit? Of course, you turn back as quickly as possible. A quick U-turn is an example of a “fast fail.”
• Lassonde for Life taps into alumni for entrepreneurial energy. Having one of the top student entrepreneurship programs in the country is a great accomplishment. All too often, however, when the students graduate, the university is no longer a resource for them, and all that entrepreneurial energy dissipates. But what if you could harness entrepreneurial talent and energy and meter it out as needed over the coming decades?
• New start-up support organizations focus efforts on STEM-related fields. Technology commercialization already is a major focus at both the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Harvard University. Yet, in recent months, these institutions announced new commercialization initiatives focused on STEM areas that will operate separate from existing TTOs.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the December 2022 issue of Technology Transfer Tactics monthly newsletter.

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Technology Transfer Tactics
Vol. 16, No. 12, December 2022

• As litigation funding gains acceptance, universities may seek more infringement cases. More universities are taking advantage of litigation funding for patent infringement cases, even as there are growing questions about how unfavorably courts and others might view this strategy.
• Vanderbilt’s ‘peer-to-peer’ Innovation Ambassadors puts faculty on TTO team. Vanderbilt University has launched what it calls the Innovation Ambassadors program — a volunteer initiative in which each department has a faculty member who serves as a liaison between researchers and innovation programs across campus. At the heart of the program is “peer to peer counseling and advising,” says Alan Bentley, assistant vice chancellor, who heads up the Center for Technology Transfer & Commercialization.
• At the big football game, BYU and Notre Dame start-ups score with investors. The University of Notre Dame football team headed to Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium this past October for its 2022 Shamrock Series game against BYU. Since 2009, this beloved series has brought the home football game experience to a neutral location and acts as a bowl game of sorts for players and fans. This year’s game had a little twist: it also served as a venue for giving start-ups from the two schools some great exposure.
• FTO analysis: A prudent step to mitigate patent infringement liability. For many TTOs, conducting a freedom-to-operate analysis to ensure a clear path to commercialization is an expensive proposition that is not a regular part of their IP-related due diligence. But in many cases it should be, and neglecting an FTO analysis can cost you in the long run. In a classic “penny wise, pound foolish” calculation, TTOs that overlook this fundamental safeguard could find themselves doing damage control.
• Milestone-driven funding for early technologies gets a DEI twist at Mount Sinai. When it comes to encouraging diversity in tech transfer activity, sometimes it seems like there’s more talk than action – but not for Mount Sinai Innovation Partners (MSIP), which is putting its money where its mouth is.
• CROs gaining bigger role in TTOs’ life science commercialization plans. In life sciences commercialization, tech transfer offices have become much more willing to bring drug candidates further forward to de-risk the IP for potential licensees, while drug-focused university start-ups also face hurdles in the development process that can make or break their futures. For both those reasons, contract research organizations (CROs) are becoming a bigger, and often critical, TTO partner.

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the November 2022 issue of Technology Transfer Tactics monthly newsletter.

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Technology Transfer Tactics
Vol. 16, No. 11, November 2022

• CU Boulder paves the way for start-ups using ‘Licensing with EASE®’ model. Since launching its Licensing with EASE® express agreement for start-up entrepreneurs in 2018, CU Boulder has seen its number of startups “increase dramatically,” according to Brynmor Rees, associate vice chancellor for research & innovation and managing director of Venture Partners.
• Tech transfer veterans apply their lessons learned to build Baptist Health Innovations. Baptist Health South Florida is waist-deep in the process of transforming from its roots as a community hospital to an academic medical center with the addition of translational research and innovation functions, and one the organization’s first moves to ramp up its commercialization activity was bringing on board two seasoned technology transfer professionals:.
• To boost tech transfer, Yale ups royalty shares for faculty, labs, departments. Yale University is changing its patent royalty sharing practices to more generously distribute net income generated from new technologies to the originating researchers, as well as their academic units and schools.
• U Arkansas commercialization retreat promotes networking as part of faculty outreach. Faculty outreach and engagement remain top of mind for most TTOs, so when new ways of doing things appear in this arena, it’s definitely a sharing moment. The University of Arkansas Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, in collaboration with the Office of Technology Ventures, has organized and hosted three-day retreats focused on research commercialization for more than 10 years, and tech transfer leaders there say it’s a great way to connect people from all over the state.
• TTO marketing tactics: What works, what doesn’t. Technology Transfer Tactics conducted a mini-survey of marketers and leaders in technology transfer offices, looking for their best advice on the tactics that worked exceptionally well for them, along with tactics to avoid spending their limit time and marketing bandwidth on.
• Auburn U’s new TTO brand depicts corporate image over academic. It’s always interesting when a TTO or otherwise titled commercialization office does a re-branding that involves more than just changing a sign on the door. In the case of Auburn University’s technology transfer unit, the Office of Innovation Advancement and Commercialization (IAC) now touts a new moniker with a very commercial rather than academic feel — the Intellectual Property Exchange (aka the IP Exchange or IPX).

The following is a list of the articles that appear in the October 2022 issue of Technology Transfer Tactics monthly newsletter.

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Technology Transfer Tactics
Vol. 16, No. 10, October 2022

Special bonus: Study on resource allocation in TTOs

A Preliminary Study of the Impact of Resource Allocation on Licensing Outcomes of Academic Institutions in the United States, contributed by tech transfer veteran Arundeep Pradhan and co-authors from his consulting firm Apio Innovation Transfer as well as Portland State University, offers fascinating insights and data on a range of resource allocation issues, particularly staffing and legal expense, and their correlation to licensing activity.

The study offers a useful look at how allocation of staff and budget dollars may affect the results of your licensing efforts, and provides some unique data points to consider and compare to your own office. We hope you benefit from this “extra” from Technology Transfer Tactics and Apio. 

• Avoid information silos to lessen the pain of TTO staff turnover. Staff turnover in a tech transfer program can create cascading problems that reach far beyond the immediate lack of talent when it involves employees who are managing active files, pursuing licensees, working with companies, and helping researchers move their inventions toward commercialization.
• Navigating the IP trail when a faculty member leaves. While universities might want to keep their best researchers forever, it’s a fact of life for TTOs that inventors often leave for greener pastures.
• USF’s online portal eases disclosures, aids transparency, and provides marketing boost. A new online licensing portal just introduced by the TTO at the University of South Florida has been welcomed by faculty, as it enhances the efficiency of the disclosure process and also offers them real-time updates on the status of their inventions. “The feedback so far is that faculty really like it,” says Michele Tyrpak, JD, USF’s director of technology engagement and commercialization.
• NCATS breaks the mold: Case studies of unique technology transfer mechanisms. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is a unique biomedical institution that is both a granting institution administered by our extramural program and a research enterprise fueled by our Division of Pre-Clinical Innovation (DPI). Very few institutions have both the funding to accomplish health initiatives through grants and contracts, as well as the internal scientific expertise to conduct original research themselves.
• TTO uses targeted webinars to educate faculty innovators. Although no one would argue that the world is a better place due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been a few unexpected positives, particularly in new ways of communicating necessitated by lack of in-person meetings. In many cases these changes, implemented out of necessity, have been adopted into regular practice even as the world has veered back toward normalcy. The University of Kentucky (UK) Office of Technology Commercialization’s (OTC) continuation of an educational outreach program they started when they were unable to hold in-person learning opportunities for their faculty is a perfect case in point.