Posts Tagged: "university patenting"

Debates over economic fairness, the appropriate role of government in the economy and the value of the patent system spill over into our world. One factor that made the enactment of Bayh-Dole so difficult was the feeling in the 60’s and 70’s that patents were inherently bad. Intellectual property used to fall under the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopolies when I joined the Judiciary Committee staff– which says much on how patents were viewed. It took the wakeup call of losing our traditional lead in innovation to Japan and Germany to start reversing this trend.

Professor Love has concluded that universities do not earn returns on their investment in patents and at the same time concluded that more than half of all respondents to his survey admitted they do not know anything about what the survey was purporting to study… This paper by Professor Love should never have been presented at a conference at Stanford. It should not be published by any journal, let alone the prestigious Yale Journal of Law & Technology. It is sloppy, careless work like this that produces worthless published papers and incorrect theories and encourages academics to simply reinforce their own beliefs without requiring any form of review, replication, or confirmation.

Recently I visited a Congressional office with a friend who led technology transfer at a public institution located in a mid-level city not normally associated with innovation. By skillfully using the authorities of Bayh-Dole and the patent system combined with good business judgment the program was very successful in start up formation and licensing, making it a driver of the regional economy. The Congressional staff were effusive in their praise of the results, which are well known in the state, vowing to do everything they could to support continued success. However, just before the meeting my friend confided that their new leadership made it clear that they did not consider technology transfer a profession requiring special skills and experience. The staff that labored so long and hard building the program got the hint and was leaving. Luckily their achievement is recognized by other institutions that are happy to snap them up. Unfortunately, the economy of the area they left behind will pay a high price for this boneheaded mistake.

MUIR: “There are approximately 40 countries around the world that have enacted their own version of the Bayh-Dole legislation because they have seen the numbers. They have seen the success that the United States has had in commercializing these discoveries. We truly are the envy of the rest of the world. In three or four months I’m going to be visiting about six different countries. What they want to hear about is how is the U.S. achieving this level of success. So oftentimes we look at our own backyard and don’t have a full appreciation of the beautiful flowers growing there but there are lots of beautiful flowers growing in our tech transfer profession in the United States.”

Jane Muir, AUTM President: “[U]niversities are not the next patent troll because at the end of the day, university tech transfer offices were put into place to ensure that the new discoveries that happen in the research laboratories ultimately get out into the marketplace by way of product and services that improve the human condition. The big difference is with patent trolls. They’re not interested in commercializing discoveries. They’re interested in using those patents to sue legitimate companies who do want to move those products into the market. From the commercialization standpoint that really is the fundamental difference. Patent trolls have no real interest in commercializing. Their interest is in litigating.”

First of all, congratulations! You made The Washington Post and they even spelled your name correctly. Unfortunately, AUTM was specifically called out in an article titled Patent Trolls Have a Surprising Ally: Universities… For a profession that keeps a low profile and goes out of its way not to antagonize people, you may wonder what in the world’s going on that you are gaining such notoriety. The answer is that you are in the sights of several groups who do not wish you well. Some want to weaken the patent system for their short term benefit, some believe society would be better off if inventions were freely available without patents; some don’t think it’s moral for universities to work with industry, and others believe they should determine who reaps the rewards of innovation. While operating on diverse belief systems, they all have one thing in common: they don’t like you.

At IPWatchdog.com we write about Bayh-Dole, technology transfer and University innovation regularly. In 2014 we are going to more regularly write about University innovations in the hope of getting good information out to the public to demonstrate the important role of Bayh- Dole and the innovations coming from Universities. Help us help you! Below is a list of the information that would be extremely helpful to have, much of which we could not obtain publicly. Critical to a good, interesting story is conveying the back story, which may be about why the inventor pursued this path in the first place or perhaps about real people who have benefit from the innovation. I understand that some of the following piece of information may be deemed to be confidential, but the more you provide the more substantive and interesting any article can be, which will lead to greater “good publicity,” which patent owners sorely need in this political climate.

Stanford sets aside an annual research budget of about $1.35 billion to fund its development operations for 2013-2014, and since the 1930s the university has been the starting grounds for nearly 40,000 companies, creating about 5.4 million jobs total. A 2012 study conducted by Stanford estimated that companies formed by Stanford entrepreneurs generate world revenues of $2.7 trillion annually. Recent Stanford research projects have included new techniques for the successful removal of stomach cancer cells, as well as biological surveys of marine life showing how crude oil leaks can affect heart health in fish. Today, we’re looking at the recent publications released from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office assigned directly to Stanford University to take a snapshot look at the innovative side of this academic institution.

Our featured patent application today features an artificial knee device that surpasses the range of motion available through previous passive devices or surgical implants. The variable motion of the mechanical knee joint found in this patent application would grant an implant patient a much greater degree of motion throughout their daily lives. Other patent applications that we decided to look at more closely include a vehicle engine designed for more efficient methanol consumption as well as more energy-efficient incandescent lighting devices. We also profile a series of patents recently issued to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to protect an array of technologies, most of them dealing with better designed computer user interfaces for various jobs. One system includes a collapsible stylus device that can enable better 3D image editing performance. Another system would control a novel style of vending machine that dispenses entertainment and information along with food and beverages. We also were piqued by a technology developed with a partner institution in Saudi Arabia for better desalination methods to create drinkable water.

We’ve found an intriguing assortment of innovations in medical and industrial fields, and even the video game industry, coming out of these academic institutions. The featured patent application for today’s column would protect a system of better capturing video game player motion for physical activities required of games. This system would make it harder for users to cheat these games and complete tasks without completing the physical motion the game asks users to perform. Other patent applications we discovered include better systems of creating useful stem cells and a more effective topical formula for acne treatment.

“Patent trolls have a surprising ally: universities” ran in the Washington Post on November 30, 2013. Two days later “Techdirt” threw the follow up: “Patenting University Research Has Been A Dismal Failure, Enabling Patent Trolling. It’s Time to Stop.” Their titles and parallel arguments suggest that both articles arise from shared talking points. Both immediately set up their victims by linking them with patent trolls. Casting anyone as an “ally of patent trolls” after huge amounts of money have been invested vilifying the term in the public mind is meant to quickly knock opponents to their knees and drive them from the field. Ostensibly the focus of their wrath is university patent licensing, but the real target is the patent system itself.

The Bayh-Dole Act was passed because Congress was rightly concerned that potential benefits from billions of dollars of federally funded research were lying dormant on the shelves of government. Government funded inventions tend to be very early stage discoveries—more like ideas than products—requiring considerable private sector risk and investment to turn them into products that can be used by the public. Under prior patent polices government agencies took such inventions away from their creators and offered them non-exclusively for development. There were no incentives for the inventors to remain engaged in product development. Not surprisingly, few such inventions were ever commercialized even though billions of dollars were being spent annually on government R&D.

patent application needed separate treatment because the patent application explains that the innovation could be used to “detect abnormalities and transfer the information through cell-phone network…” If you let your Sci-fi mind run wild you can envision all kinds of potential uses for a technology capable of monitoring brain function to detect abnormalities. Could it, for example, know when someone is about to do something illegal or before someone might engage in self destructive behavior? As the boundaries of science and technology continue to get pushed into new realms you can certainly bet that there will be a great many technologies that will provoke significant ethical debate.