Wow ! that was some fast digging and blogging *very impressed* - Nils Reinton

I think it's a monkey-see-monkey-do thing (and I work for one of the original monkeys!). As soon as one high-profile uni sheds its tech-transfer office, many will do likewise. - D0r0th34

Nils: the digging was all Christina. - Bill Hooker

The median "2007 FTE", which I assume is full time equivalent staff in the tech transfer program, was 4, and the median licensing income was $1,426,863 -- so it seems that most tech transfer offices are probably paying for themselves (though that doesn't account for the asspain they cause the researchers, and assumes they're taking a pretty steep %). There were more than 40 schools reporting less than $500,000 though, among whom median FTE was 2 -- surely those TT offices are having trouble even bringing in enough to pay their own upkeep. - Bill Hooker

I think it is generally accepted that most UK tech transfer operations are loss making operations. As someone much smarter than me said "if a TT office are any good they would have spun themselves out" - and the ones that have done well have done exactly that. - Cameron Neylon

no real digging - just know the terms our people use and what prof assn they belong to (disclosure: I do research for our tech transfer office) - Christina Pikas

i commented there - but there's a lot of research on this - universities have to patent their stuff or they can't work with certain companies - they might also get the rug pulled out from underneath them so they can't continue the research if they write the licenses wrong - Christina Pikas

Technology transfer is not a profitable business. US universites do it because of the Bayh-Dole regulations which confers ownerhsip on patented inventions made with Federal funds to the unis. Statistics from thirty years of licensing at Stanford show the chance of finding a big winner is 1/2000. However, despite the data, university administrators persist in subscribing to the myth that a patent portfolio is a storehouse of gold. - Jack H. Pincus

Great post, Bill and Christina. It's valid to ask whether or not all this tech transfer stuff is really the best use of time. - Mr. Gunn

The blog post referenced at the top of this discussion contains a major misconception. It is not true that patenting absolutely restricts publication or disclosure of data. It is true that publishing before patenting can cause a loss of rights outside the US. However, publication and disclosure of data do not cause a loss of rights anywhere in the world after an application has been filed. - Jack H. Pincus

Re spinning out tech transfer, it doesn't guarantee success. There is a disconnect between university research and commercial interests. Technology transfer works when there is overalp between university research and corporate needs. Otherwise, changing the venue of a tech transfer office, aggressive marketing, promotion, etc. doesn't make a difference. - Jack H. Pincus

Jack, I'm aware that once you've filed you're free to disclose. I thought I worded the last paragraph carefully and did not indicate otherwise. Where do you think I got it wrong? (I'm happy to be corrected and update the post.) - Bill Hooker

Christina: good point, I'll update. I think there are two parts to the point you make: 1, if you don't patent you won't get industry partners (no big -- the level of industry investment in academic research is dwarfed by govt etc grants), and 2, if you don't patent maybe some company will and then you'll have to license your own tech -- e.g. PCR, though in that (and I suspect many) cases the company allows "free licensing" for research, for PR purposes. - Bill Hooker

Bill, it's not your error. It's an error in the blog post you linked to. - Jack H. Pincus

Bill and Christina, there are some very large university industry collaborations. Merck's collaboration with the Gladstone Institute at UCSF is one example. Another is Pfizer's collaboration with Washington University. There have also been large contracts to individual labs based on their patents. As to patenting, only the inventor can file a patent application. Nobody else can obtain a patent if an inventor chosses to publish and not patent. - Jack H. Pincus

Jack, that's my blog. :-) If you'd like to post a comment I'll feature it as a further update. - Bill Hooker

this is NOT my area of specialty - but i did read about a bunch of universities being sued, even though they had some legitimate equivalent to fair use... crap, now i'm really going to have to look that stuff up. - Christina Pikas

I've heard that only a small percent of all patents (not just university patents) generate income. I'm looking for a reliable source, but this article says 3% or less, citing a harvard business review study: http://www.foley.com/files.... I think an interesting followup study would be to compare university licensing activities and revenue with that of for-profit corporations. - Hilary

One other interesting data source for university patenting activities: http://www.uspto.gov/go... - Hilary

Hilary: thanks heaps for the extra reference material. If I can muster the energy I'll go digging in there. - Bill Hooker

Yochai Benkler references some research on how little revenue universities receive from patents and other IP protected research. - Bill Anderson from twhirl

@otherBill: if you mean Wealth of Networks, that's been on my reading list so long it's migrated to the top of the guilt section! Thanks for giving me another reason to get off my butt and read it. - Bill Hooker

More on the topic http://future.iftf.org/2008... - Anders Norgaard

Bill and Christina - Excellent post. I saw some numbers Australia-wide a few years back, and the conclusion was that patent / tech transfer offices are pretty much a wash (they actually lost slightly more money than they brought in, as I recall). I guess that's consistent with your results. I didn't note the source, unfortunately (it was in the middle of an otherwise boring talk). Of course, there may be hard-to-measure intangible benefits to such offices. - Michael Nielsen

I read something recently about how patenting serves a "signaling" function for public companies. Patenting activity connotes to investors that people inside the company see something of value, even if the company doesn't plan to generate revenue on that particular patent. Given that the majority of university patents are held by top tier universities, I wonder if patents in the university serve a similar role (for signaling to potential students, faculty recruits, funding agencies, etc.)? - Hilary

A source for my earlier comment: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3...: "empirical studies find the average value of patents to be in the range of about $7,500 to $25,000 which is generally less than average acquisition costs. See, e.g., Mark Schankerman, How Valuable is Patent Protection? Estimates by Technology Field, 29 RAND J. OF ECON. 93 (1998): http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3.... Furthermore, most estimates suggest that less than five percent of patents have any apparent value at all—less than one percent are litigated (and these are found invalid at a rate of about 50 percent), and only a small additional number are licensed. See Mark A. Lemley, Rational Ignorance at the Patent Office, 95 NW. U. L. REV. 1495, 1507 (2001) http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3..." - Hilary

The SSRN paper above also reviews a couple of other theories as to why corporations might engage in patenting even though payoffs are typically low: "(1) the signaling theory, which posits that patents cheaply provide valuable information about the invention or the firm, see, e.g., Clarisa Long, Patent Signals, 69 U. CHI. L. REV. 625 (2002): http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3...; (2) the internal metric theory, which suggests that individual patents are useful tools for the measurement of performance within firms; (3) the lottery theory, which analogizes a patent to a lottery ticket, with a very small chance of a very large payoff" The authors of that paper also advance their own theory - that patent portfolios are worth more than the sum of any of the individual patents. - Hilary

very nice post Bill. Also interesting comments.. keep them coming.. - Daniel Jurczak

Hilary, thanks again for all the info! - Bill Hooker