Author Archives: Melba Kurman
Every year, graduate students and faculty at U.S. research universities invent more than more 20,000 new devices, methods, drug molecules, and other novel technologies. Will the America Invents Act and our new “first to file” patent system impact how universities manage this ever-growing stockpile of university inventions? Right now, the jury is divided. Continue reading
Innovation is Like Love, aptly described by those old posters I used to see at my dentist’s office, “if you love something, set it free, and if it comes back to you, it’s yours…” Same thing for innovative university technologies, novel methods and creative people. Here’s a poster that should hang in campus hallways: “If you want innovation to take place, set it free, and if it comes back to you – well – it’s not precisely yours, but at least you’ve succeeded in introducing genuine value to the rest of the world….” So what’s the problem? The problem is that innovative university research is not set free. Currently, university technology commercialization strategies rest on the assumption that university research is most commercially appealing when managed as potentially lucrative, university-owned intellectual property. The current approach to commercializing university inventions is due for an overhaul. Yet, universities and federal agencies continue to invest money and resources in initiatives and programs that … Continue reading
What would you do if you were the university official in charge of company research partnerships and a Fortune 100 tech company offered to fund a research center at your university to the tune of $2.5 million dollars a year? If it were me, in these tough financial times, I’d say “great, tell me more,” visions of a nice press release dancing in my head. But wait, there’s A Catch: the company has made it a condition that in order to receive the millions, your university must open source any resulting software and inventions that come out of this research funding. Yes, open source. Your university cannot stake claim to any patents. There will be no intellectual property clauses, no negotiations, no… nonsense. This situation is not hypothetical. Since January, four U.S. universities have agreed to host Intel Science and Technology Centers (ISTCs) that will be funded at the rate … Continue reading
Teens, Engineering Education and 3D Printing A vibrant innovation-oriented economy needs technically savvy inventors and entrepreneurs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of technology-oriented jobs continues to increase. Yet the number of trained and qualified engineers continues to decline and the U.S. is not doing a great job attracting youngsters to engineering-related careers. How can universities, parents and corporate employers convince teens, particularly girls and under-represented minorities, that technology-oriented careers are creative, good for humankind, and entrepreneurial? Teens need a reason to study engineering and technology-related subjects. If teens think that engineering is only about abstract theory and math-based problem solving, they likely will gravitate towards another career choice. What if it were possible to introduce teens to the joys of product design by enabling them to experience, first-hand, an entire product design cycle in less than a week? Recently, I participated …
I usually write about innovative university technology in the context of university patenting and licensing strategies, a process called “technology transfer.” Right now, however, I’ve got scholarly publishing on my mind. After all, scholarly journals have been, and remain, the largest conduit of university know-how to the rest of the world. Cautious, esoteric and incremental as scientific journal articles may appear to be, scholarly publications are the undisputed powerhouse of university knowledge sharing. In contrast, university-owned patents are a tiny little channel of knowledge transfer. But setting all that aside, my recent experience with scholarly publishing is a bit more personal. In fact, just today, I received my first boilerplate rejection letter from the biggest and baddest scholarly journal of them all, Science. Why in the heck did I labor to write 24 drafts, sculpting and shaping my tender, yet brilliant idea into an article worthy of the deities in … Continue reading
Depends on Who You Ask by Melba Kurman A neat bit of wordplay takes place when people talk about whether U.S. research universities need to change their strategies for commercializing the inventions and patents that arise from on-campus labs. This particular debate involves two camps: those who believe universities are underfunded, and those who believe they’re underperforming. The first camp, the ”Underfunders,” are in favor of the current approach. They claim that the university unit that patents and licenses inventions – aka the technology transfer office — is doing fine but just needs more money. This is the stepping off point for this group’s recommendation that the best solution would be for the feds to give universities more money to keeping doing what it’s doing, but bigger: hire more staff, set up lots of entrepreneur networking events, institute on-campus classes to teach professors how to be …
Can U.S. research universities learn from IBM’s intellectual property (IP) licensing strategies? I don’t mean that universities should behave like a for-profit corporation and attempt to wring revenue out of the plethora of intellectual activity that takes place on campus. This wouldn’t work for several reasons. I mean that some elements of IBM’s IP licensing strategy might improve the way U.S. research universities manage the patents that result from publicly funded on-campus research projects. Here are some elements of IBM’s IP licensing strategy that are revelant to university patent portfolios, although not necessarily in the way you would expect: IBM IP-related revenue includes payments from licensing know-how, consulting fees and other intangibles, not just patents Patenting decisions at IBM are de-centralized and inventors given bonuses Selected IBM patents are cross-licensed to other companies Potentially patentable IBM technologies are sometimes placed into the public domain Selected IBM patents are …
