Tags: lostart davidcrotty Posted by: cwhooker - Bill Hooker

Is David Crotty right -- "Lots of researchers support their families and labs through money generated by patents, and most universities are heavily dependent upon their patent portfolios for funding."? Does anyone have any data to speak to this question? - Bill Hooker

there's data on tech transfer, but from what i hear, the licensing revenue for universities isn't quite what they hoped - patenting is really more about prestige than revenue. Some free summary data here: http://www.autm.net/AM... (last year reported 2007) - Christina Pikas

universities are heavily dependent on industry and gov't funded research, but not really on patents - afaik - Christina Pikas

Thanks heaps Christina! I'm going to dig into that data now. - Bill Hooker

I don't know anyone personally in UK academia that makes any significant quantity of personal money from patents or exploitation. A small number successfully exploit it for getting research funding but I don't know anyone who has got rich of patents. The one UK academic I do know personally who made a lot of money was by building up a commodity company that could produce high quality material, and then selling it to a major player (that promptly ran it into the ground - said academic now has a new company) - Cameron Neylon

licensing deals can take a really long time to pan out and sometimes the university gets an interest in the start up company or royalty fees or something so there not as much cash up front. The inventor gets some portion of this money, but the tech transfer office has to keep some for its operating expenses. - Christina Pikas

Some breakdown of the AUTM data here: http://www.sennoma.net/main... - Bill Hooker

Funny, in reply to David I said "It seems everyone wants to be Brian Druker (gleevec), but high profile cases like that are high profile precisely because they're so rare." But Druker works at OHSU, which reported licensing income that amounted to 0.46% of their research expenditure. So not even a high-profile drug generates much money. - Bill Hooker