From Inspiration to Monetization: Making Tech Transfer Work for Innovators, Universities, and Their Partners — MIT Enterprise Forum Cambridge

February 4, 2020 5:30 PM - 8:00 PM (EST)

Description

Tech transfer offices (TTOs) bridge the divide between the market and innovators at universities and non-profit organizations.

 TTOs help to promote the adoption of technology by matching technologists and scientists with industry that can bring that technology to market TTOs can also generate revenue to support development and to demonstrate its value.

 Yet, TTOs face numerous challenges. Curating a marketable patent portfolio on a limited budget is difficult, especially where technology in development often takes years to come to market. Additionally, some TTOs receive inadequate buy-in from their universities and faculty, complicating the invention harvesting and portfolio curation processes. TTOs, in the course of monetizing, must also bear in mind partnerships and other business relationships their parent organizations have or may wish to pursue.

 This program will discuss the roles TTOs can and should play in research organizations, best practices, key trends, and upcoming challenges.

 Major topics

 Invention harvesting Creating a virtuous cycle

 – incentivizing your innovators to disclose inventions and to participate in the harvesting process Best practices – optimizing your invention harvesting process Useful metrics 

– statistics that may be useful in understanding ways in which your process is succeeding and ways in which it could improve Portfolio curation Marketable portfolio composition

 – understanding circumstances under which foreign equivalents and continuations can drive portfolio value Shepherding limited resources

 – spotting, as early as possible, the technologies in which you should invest heavily Monetization Potential transaction partners

 – identifying and approaching prospective partners Patents-plus

 – selling know-how and ongoing partnerships as part of a larger deal Presentation to market

 – generating marketing materials, including evidence of use or claim charts Valuation

 – pricing your assets and/or articulating the business objectives you wish to achieve in an IP transaction 

Moderator: 

Robert J.L. Moore, Patent Attorney, Caldwell IP

 Speakers:

 Stephanie Adamany, General Counsel, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation

 Ian McClure, Executive Director, Office of Technology Commercialization at University of Kentucky 

Roger Ross, CEO and Founder, Commonwealth Licensing Services LLC 

Michael Gulliford, Managing Principal, Soryn IP Group, LLC 

Rhys Williams, Associate VP of Florida Atlantic University’s Division of Research and Managing Director of the FAU Tech Runway